
















































With the Gilt Off 





‘ * 








I 


% 












With the Gilt Off 


By 

A. St. John Adcock 


$ 


G. P. Putnam’s S ons 

l^ewYork & London 
IDje 'Hmckerbockrt Press 


TZ* 


UK 

& 


Copyright, 1923, by 
A. St. John Adcock 


©C1A760388 ’ 



*v o *¥ 


To 

COULSON KERNAHAN 

{who may recognise in the shorter of these stories revised 
versions of five of my “ East End Idyllswhich , published 
under his auspices, brought me nothing so good as a friendship 
that I count among the best of my possessions) 

with fraternal regards 
from 

THE AUTHOR. 






CONTENTS 


The Soul of Penelope Sanders 


• 

PAGE 

3 

The Seat of Repentance 




12 

Jenny Chooses . 




26 

A Cash Account 




39 

On the Way Back 




51 

The Last Chapter 




65 

Of Two Evils 




82 

A Blooming Plant 




100 

Don Juan of Haggerston 




109 

A Spoilt Idyll . 




184 

The Fugitive 




197 

An Interrupted Romance 




224 

Charity 




234 

The Spectre of a Sin 




248 


vii 







viii CONTENTS 

Tilly’s Sister . 

Helen of Bow . 

An Extra Turn . 

The Wedding Day 


PAGE 

. 256 

. 263 

. 275 

. 283 


V 

WITH THE GILT OFF 


1 

















THE SOUL OF PENELOPE SANDERS 


It had been raining hard nearly all day; it was 
raining still. Torrents of dirty water ran and 
gurgled along the gutters; the lamp-lights were 
hazily reflected in streaming pavements; here and 
there glimmered a shallow puddle that was pitted 
incessantly by the slanting rain; and the roadways 
lay deep in liquid mud that spurted from passing 
hoofs and spun in circling mists about the following 
wheels. 

Lights glowing in the windows of the rows of 
plain houses had a cheery, comfortable look, which 
lent a keener edge of desolation and wet discomfort 
to the streets. Few people were abroad, and they, 
for the most part, flitted by in haste under dripping 
umbrellas; here and there little groups of discon¬ 
solate outcasts huddled together, damp and shiver¬ 
ing, in doorways or under shadowy arches. 

One outcast there was who loitered indifferently 
through the rain, bedraggled and wretched. Once 
or twice she turned aside for shelter, but each time, 


3 


4 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


growing impatient with the persistent downpour, 
she re-emerged into it, and moved on again. 

Presently, she went by the open door-way of a 
stunted, zinc mission hall, and caught a sidelong 
glimpse of the dry, bright interior and rows of 
attentive listeners. A warm air from within 
breathed upon her face as she crossed the line of 
light that lay athwart the pavement. She passed, 
but the misery of the night seemed instantly in¬ 
tensified; the temptation of the light and warmth 
overmastering her, she wavered and went back, 
and lurked unnoticed in the arid little vestibule. 

The grateful warmth penetrated to her blood, 
as she stood there, till her numbed limbs were 
tingling with it; then, by degrees, she began 
involuntarily to become aware of the discourse 
of the preacher within. 

He was a simple man, apparently, and unedu¬ 
cated, but spoke as if he were terribly in earnest; 
and, from falling on her ears in a spate of meaning¬ 
less sound, his words took to themselves a meaning 
she was at no loss to understand. From being 
foolish and strange, what he said became extra¬ 
ordinarily familiar to her and momentous; it was 
as if a finer sense she had lost long since had been 
unexpectedly restored to her. 


THE SOUL OF PENELOPE SANDERS 5 


While she listened, old memories that had been 
buried in her heart these many years, and forgotten, 
rose ghost-like from their grave, and touched her 
with feelings of wistfulness and regret. They 
were sad and sacred remembrances bom of the 
reminiscent crying of the preacher and the mel¬ 
ancholy beating of the rain without—they were 
thoughts of the old home in the quiet inland 
village, the lamp-lit parlour, cosy on such wild 
nights as this, and the kindly household faces— 
thoughts of innocent dreams that were hers when 
she was a girl, of her first love, her young ideals, 
and all the white sweetness of the life that was 
hers and that she had sullied now so irrevocably. 

The preacher was passionately in earnest and 
had a firm faith in the Devil. He allured and 
menaced his hearers with the joys of Heaven in 
one hand and the torments of Hell in the other; 
but it was exactly what she had been used to in 
the far-off days that were vanished, and therefore 
it exercised the mightier influence on her now. 
His warnings and promises carried with them all 
the weight of her own early beliefs; his voice was 
like a remembered voice from the past reiterating, 
“Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire!” and 
like a voice from the past came also the Diviner 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


pronouncement, “Neither do I condemn thee; 
go, and sin no more!” 

The harmonium was droning, the congregation 
had risen and were singing a last hymn, and she 
delayed no longer; she shrank shamefacedly from 
being detected there. 

Hurrying along again through the stinging rain, 
weary and hungry, she was sustained by a new and 
high resolve that was gathering shape and strength 
in her brain. Hitherto she had been desperately 
careless of all but her immediate needs, but now, 
this night, with those dead voices of yesterday in 
her ears, those dead hands of the past beckoning 
and leading her, she realised, as she had never 
realised before, the degradation and vileness of the 
life she was living. Yet how was she to escape 
from it? “ Go, and sin no more! ” But now, fallen 
to what she was, how was it possible for her to 
live and not sin? At this moment she was troubled 
with remorse, and repentant, and repentance was 
said to mean pardon; but she could not trust herself, 
and to-morrow would call upon her very definitely 
to choose between sin and starvation. If she could 
die to-night, her heart cleansed by the purifying 
fires of her penitence, all her past forgiven, and she 
thus made spotless— It was her only hope, 


THE SOUL OF PENELOPE SANDERS 7 

her one way of escape; and the thought and the 
hope grew and brightened until they dazzled even 
while they inspired her. 

She sped onward in a tearful, exultant frenzy; 
she was carried away by the unwonted fervour 
that had so strangely taken hold upon her. Within 
the darkness of her own mind, she saw a certain 
narrow street already, with a dusky, oily flash of 
the river at the end of it. 

But when that goal of her journey was yet half 
a mile distant, in passing under the gloom of a wide 
railway-arch, she stumbled over a body that lay 
stretched on the stones, and almost fell. The 
whimpering groan of a man in pain arrested her, 
and she stopped and stooped to him. 

“Hurt you?” she enquired, not unkindly. 
“Sorry. I couldn’t see yer here in the dark.” 

The man raised himself on his elbow and turned 
a gaunt emaciated face up to her. Its ghastly 
whiteness caught the shine of the lamp at the end 
of the arch, and a swift, puzzled expression swept 
over it—an expression that simultaneously agi¬ 
tated her own features. 

“What!” she gasped. “It isn’t—is it Tom 
Hamlin?” 

“My God!” he ejaculated, his peaked face 


8 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


smitten with apprehension. “It’s never you, 
Pen!” 

She stood a minute gazing down at him, speech¬ 
less. Those gentle memories that had come to 
her in the vestibule of the mission hall took another 
light and other shadows from the presence of this 
man. He sank back, and lay watching her un¬ 
easily, labouring for breath, and shaken with fits 
of coughing. 

“You’re ill,” she said abruptly. 

“Bronchitis,” he answered drearily. “I’m 
about done up.” 

“You ought to be in a hospital.” 

“I know. I thought I could pull through, but I 
collapsed all of a sudden just now. ” 

“You ought not to be lyin’ here.” 

“Got nowhere to go. Had no work for weeks, 
an’ nothin’ to eat since this mornin’.” He was 
interrupted by a paroxysm of coughing. “I’m 
done. See what I’ve come to, Pen. You couldn’t wish 
me any worse—a beggar, and dyin’ in the street.” 

“I can’t help you,” she was beginning. 

I don’t expect it—no right to,” he struck in. 
“Never thought I’d see you any more. I’ve 
brought you to this. I thought when I saw you 
you’d be hating me and kick up a row.” 


THE SOUL OF PENELOPE SANDERS 9 


“I don’t hate you,” she responded dully. “Not 
now. What’s the good?” 

“ You were always better to me than I deserved.” 

“We were both fools, and it’s too late to grouse 
about it.” 

So they crouched there, for a few minutes, out¬ 
casts of the world, and finding a dim comfort in 
each other’s companionship. 

“Ah, Pen, I’ve been worse than a fool!” he 
sighed. “I’ve often thought of old times—of you 
down yonder in the old home—and wondered what 
had happened to you. I was a brute to serve you 
as I did. It was me brought you to this. I never 
meant to. I meant to have kept my promise, and 
I let you down-” 

“Never mind. What’s the use o’ talking of that 
now?” 

“I left you to face the trouble alone, poor old 

girl!” 

“Oh, well, and I ran away from it,” she laughed 
bitterly. “I came to London, thinkin’ I might run 
against you here. . . . And I have, at last!” 

“When I remember-” 

“ No good rememberin’. Cut it out! ” 

She was a little surprised that she felt no par¬ 
ticular resentment against him; he had wronged 



10 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


her—but it all happened so long ago, and so much 
had happened since, that she could recall it almost 
without emotion, certainly without any acute 
sensibility of the injury he had done her. The 
wrath she had once cherished against him had 
burnt itself out, and she felt neither the power nor 
the will to rekindle it. So far as she was concerned, 
it was all over, and could never be altered. She 
melted to a vague pity for him and for herself; life 
had been cruel to them both; and she was drawn to 
him even with a subtle tenderness, for he had come 
to her, lonely, from her past, and the sanctities of 
that past were about him as well as its sins. 

The intermittent coughing that racked and tore 
him was terrible to hear; it sent a chill through 
her, cold as she was. 

“You mustn’t stop here, anyhow,” she said. 

“What’s the use of talkin’? Got nowhere to go, 
I’m starvin’, and I can die as well here as anywhere. 
I’m too far gone to move,” he whined. “I’m 
starvin’, I tell you. I’d sell my soul, if I’ve got 
one, for a drink and a mouthful of grub.” 

“Perhaps I can sell mine for it,” she returned, 
with a laugh; then, with sudden determination, 
“ I’ll get you something. You wait here till I come 
back.” 


THE SOUL OF PENELOPE SANDERS 11 


He did not attempt to stay her. He closed his 
eyes and lay inert and wheezing painfully. One or 
two people went by and thought him drunk and 
asleep. How long she was gone he did not know, 
for he took no count of time; but by and by he was 
roused by her voice calling him. He had forgotten 
her, and for the moment fancied he was in the 
throes of some delirious dream, but as he gazed 
it came back on him that this was she in reality. 

“Come on, Tom,” she called, shaking him en¬ 
couragingly. “Here, take a nip o’ this.” 

He sat up, and she held a small bottle to his lips 
and the fierce bite of the brandy stirred him from 
his lethargy. 

“I’ve picked up enough for a feed, an’ brought a 
taxi for you.” He had not seen it till now, standing 
by the kerb under the arch, and the driver eyeing 
him impassively from his seat. “ Come on, old boy, 
you can come to my place with me,” she urged 
him, with a flippant bitterness. “You did for me 
in this world long ago, an’ now you’ve done for 
me in the next, so we may as well make the most 
o’ what’s left. Come on.” 

She helped him to his feet, and he staggered 
toward the glare of the taxi, broken, ague-smitten, 
helpless, and clinging to her for support. 


THE SEAT OF REPENTANCE 


“Sam,” said Mrs. Webling, over Saturday night’s 
supper, “you know that new man you an’ your 
chaps at the Works have been guying all the 
week?” 

Mr. Webling nodded with his mouth full. 

A steady, decent man, but no paragon, he had 
spent the evening at his Working Man’s Club 
quenching his thirst for knowledge and other 
stimulants, and had just come home hungry. 

“Well, I wonder you had the heart to do it—I 
really do!” Mrs. Webling continued reproach¬ 
fully. “He is a good feller.” 

“Who said he wasn’t?” 

“You don’t treat him as if he was.” 

“He’s all right. Who’s done him any harm?” 

“Why you, an’ the rest of you at the Works, 
accordin’ to what you bin tellin’ me every night 
this week,” she protested indignantly. “An’ you 
the foreman, too! Wonder you encourage such 
goings on. It’s shameful, I call it.” 

12 


THE SEAT OF REPENTANCE 13 


“Here, steady on! What’s the matter? Little 
bit o’ larkin’ don’t do nobody no harm now an’ 
agen.” Mr. Webling’s plump figure began to 
quiver with reminiscent chucklings. “You should 
ha’ heard Wat Simkins this arternoon. Lord— I 
larfed fit to bust! Couldn’t help it. Wat, he gits 
behind this new cove, Joe Williams, an’ he says— 
says he-” 

But Mr. Webling had to stop; he could not finish 
for laughing. 

“I don’t want to hear what he said,” cried Mrs. 
Webling, with warmth. “It’s nothin’ to larf at.” 

“You never heard him. You don’t know what 
he said.” 

“No, nor don’t want to. Pity you can’t find 
somethin’ better to do with your time, all of you, 
than larf an’ make silly jokes over a poor man’s 
misfortune. Cruel and cowardly, I call it, to tor¬ 
ment a man an’ sneer at him, like you an’ them 
other grinnin’ jackanapes at the Works has bin 
doin’ all the week wi’ this poor feller!” 

“Here! Gently does it, missis—gently!” Mr. 
Webling interrupted, his ruddy face rounding in 
surprise. “What’s all the excitement? What are 
you upsettin’ yerself about? Why, you’ve larfed 
more than we every night when I told you.” 


14 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“More shame for me, if I did. I don’t know 
nothin’ about him ’cept what you told me, else I 
wouldn’t. If I’d known all about him, same as you 
do-” 

“What d’yer mean? What do I know about 
him?” 

“You knew about his wife?” 

“Never knew he’d got one. He never said a 
word to me about her, nor I don’t believe to any¬ 
body else. What about her?” 

“You know he only moved into these parts a 
week or so ago, when he got the job under you at 
Piper’s Works?” 

Mr. Webling nodded again. 

“You knew he’d bin out o’ work a long while 
afore he come here, an’ was pinched with havin’ a 
rough time of it?” 

“That’s nothin’, old gel. We’re all ’ard up at 
times, ain’t we? He ain’t so bloomin’ thin- 
skinned-” 

“But you ain’t all got wives that’s crippled for 
life an’ laid up invalids, an’ you doin’ yer own 
housework an’ tellin’ her lies to keep her cheerful, 
an’ never lettin’ her know that a pack o’ rough 
brutes at the Works is jeerin’ an’ larfin* at yer, an’ 
all becos-” 



THE SEAT OF REPENTANCE 15 


She had to stop; but it was not for laughing. 

Mr. Webling coughed uneasily, and grew im¬ 
patient of waiting for her to go on. 

“I never knew his wife was a invaleed, an’ all 
that,” he said apologetically. “Who’s bin tellin’ 
you, missis?” 

“Why, when I was out shoppin’ to-day,” she 
resumed, touching her eyes with her apron, and 
quieting down, “I dropped in to have a cup of tea 
with Annie Robins, an’ she said she’d got some new 
lodgers, an’ they was the Williamses—Joe Williams 
an’ his wife.” 

“Livin’ there, is he? They’ve got his address 
at the Works, but I didn’t know it was there.” 

“Yes. Well, an’ I started to tell her—laughin’ 
like—how you and your chaps had bin makin’ your 
jokes at him all the week, an’ she didn’t larf a bit— 
she got quite upset, an’ when she told me what sort 
o’ folk they was I felt downright ashamed.” 

“How d’yer mean? Whaffor?” 

“ Why, they’ve been shockin’ poor an’ had a lot o’ 
trouble. They bin married near six year; an’ had 
two children, an’ both of ’em died—poor things!” 

Mr. Webling ate in silence; with a fleeting 
thought of his own two, now sound asleep in the 
next room. 


16 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“And a year or more ago, it seems, Mrs. Williams 
had a fall an’ injured her spine—an’ there she is, a 
cripple, an’ never won’t be any better, an’ the way 
that man—that Joe Williams looks after her, an 5 
goes without things, an’ won’t let her know, an’ 
makes believe he’s always happy an’ comfortable 
as can be so’s she shan’t be worried—well, there, 
when Annie Robins told me it fair made me cry.” 

She was a homely, kindly, sympathetic body, 
and could hardly help crying again to think of it. 

“Why didn’t he tell me, then?” growled Mr. 
Webling. 

“Becos he’s not the kind of man to make a fuss 
over what he has to put up with,” she retorted 
sharply; then continued, “We went upstairs to see 
her. Annie carried tea up for all of us; she says 
she takes her tea up an’ has it with her becos Mrs. 
Williams is so lonely. He does all the work in 
their two rooms—Joe Williams does. He’s up 
before five every mornin’, gets the place tidy, 
makes breakfast for both of ’em, and is on at the 
Works by six. Then he slips round home in the 
dinner hour, an’ does the cookin’ for both of ’em; 
an’ he spends his Sundays and his even’s chattin’ 
an’ readin’ to her. 0’ course Annie Robins is in 
an’ out keepin’ an eye on her while he’s away— 


THE SEAT OF REPENTANCE 17 


she’s a real good sort, Annie—but he does every¬ 
thing for her; waits on her hand an’ foot. He’s 
a man, is Joe Williams, an’ no mistake.” 

Mr. Webling remained mute, a sense of his 
heartless brutality growing upon him while he 
listened. 

“She was all by herself when we went up, ” Mrs. 
Webling proceeded. “He was out—Joe Williams 
was—gone to do the shoppin’. She was very nice- 
lookin’, but such a thin, white little creetur, Sam, 
it fair made my heart ache to see her. An’, when 
she knew who I was, she got talkin’ about you. 
She said Joe—her husband—liked you, an’ spoke 
so well of you an’ all his mates, an’ she was so glad 
becos, she said, his last foreman had bin a nasty 
wretch who made Joe miserable an’ her too, becos 
she couldn’t bear to see Joe bothered. 

“She talked a lot about that, an’ every time she 
praised you, Sam—me knowing how scandalous 
you an’ the rest of ’em have bin servin’ that poor 
feller all the week—I went that red and awkward 
I didn’t know how to answer. O’ course, he 
wouldn’t tell her the truth—he knowed she’d fret 
if he did. Y’see she’s so helpless—she can only 
sit up there in bed an’ do bits o’ sewin’, and she 
ain’t much of a hand at that. She said so herself, 


18 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


an’ told me of her own accord about them trowsis 
of his. She sewed that patch on, with her own 
poor hands, and says she, ‘I’m afraid it looks very 
ugly, but it was the only bit o’ cloth I’d got that 
nearly matched ’em, and to make it fit proper I 
had to sew it,’ she says, ‘with the stripes across 
instead of downwards, like they is on the trowsis, 
an’ that makes it show up more, but I’m so glad,’ 
she says, ‘Joe tells me nobody seemed to notice it.’ 
Nobody notice it, indeed! ” she scoffed indignantly. 
“When you an’ your precious men don’t seem to 
have had nothing else to notice all the week!” 

“Well, we was only joking,” Mr. Webling 
pleaded feebly. “If we had had any idea--—” 

“Only jokin’!” echoed Mrs. Webling. “It was 
no joke to them poor things! so poor with her 
illness an’ him bein’ out o’ work that he couldn’t 
buy a new pair, an’ she an invaleed, slavin’ with 
her own poor fingers to make him look decent, an’ 
you inhuman mob o’ Cheshire cats grinnin’ an’ 
laughin’ at it!” 

“But look here, missis, how could we tell? 
We just thought it looked funny-” 

“Funny! Oh, very funny! What that dyin’ 
cripple woman had done with her own dear hands!” 
cried Mrs. Webling, savagely dabbing at her eyes 


THE SEAT OF REPENTANCE 19 


with her handkerchief. “Very funny, I must say, 
an’ I wonder you can think it, Sam.” 

Mr. Webling sat smoking and brooding by the 
fire, and meekly permitted her to talk herself down 
without further interruption. 

He brooded deeply, and sufficiently indicated 
the direction his reflections had taken by enquir¬ 
ing, at length, as they were making ready for bed. 

“Where’s them old trowsis of mine I used last 
autumn when I was gardenin’?” 

“What do you want with them to-night?” Mrs. 
Webling demanded. 

“Don’t want ’em to-night,” he replied diffi¬ 
dently. “It’s a notion I had. There’s a biggish 
patch in ’em, y’know—you did it so’s I could use 
’em knockin’ about at home. Seems to me, like 
if I was to go in ’em on Monday mornin’ it might 
make Joe Williams easy, like. Sort of show him 
we’d only bin larkin’, cos we wore the same sort 
ourselves at times. We ain’t no bloomin’ toffs; he’s 
just one of us, an’—well, you know how I mean.” 

He blundered to a stop; but Mrs. Webling under¬ 
stood, and softened toward him. She was proud 
that he could be magnanimous and own he was 
wrong, and go such lengths in order to make 
amends to a subordinate. 


20 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“It would stop the others larfin’ at him, any¬ 
how,” Mr. Webling added. “If they larfed at 
him it would be like larfin’ at me, an’ I’d punch 
their blarsted heads for ’em! ” 

“Yes,” Mrs. Webling agreed, “it would put a 
stop to it, and I dessay it would make Joe Williams 
feel better. Something orter be done, but don’t 
you go punchin’ no heads or doin’ anything silly. 
No need for that.” 

She fully encouraged him in his scheme of 
atonement, and heartily approved of a develop¬ 
ment of it that occurred to him after tea on 
Sunday evening. 

“I’ll just step round to the ‘Black Lion,’” he 
said. “Wat Simkins an’ some o’ the others out of 
our room generally drops in there for a final Sunday 
evenings. Sure to catch some of ’em. I’ll give ’em 
a word about this, an’ let ’em know there’s to be 
no more of it. They won’t want no more—they’ll 
be as sorry as me when I tell ’em.” 

Wat Simkins and two other of them were in the 
“Black Lion,” consorting with sociable strangers, 
but, by a little deft manoeuvring, Mr. Webling 
separated them from that leaven, and, getting 
them apart, briefly and emphatically unbosomed 
himself. 


THE SEAT OF REPENTANCE 21 


They were average good-natured fellows, as he 
was, and his disclosures moved them to genuine 
remorse. 

“Why couldn’t he ’ave let us know?” Wat 
grumbled. 

“That’s what I say,” returned Mr. Webling. 
“Still, you know now, an’ you understand there’s 
not to be no more of it.” 

“ Course there won’t be, ” they chorused resent¬ 
fully. “You was as bad as we was, Sam. But 
there’d never have been none of it at all if he’d told 
us,” Wat supplemented. “I’ve a good mind to 
tell him so.” 

“Don’t you do nothing of the kind,” Mr. Web¬ 
ling warned him. “Less said the better. All you 
got to do is to be friendly as if it was nothing and 
you’d forgotten it. So happens,” he added, with 
unction, for he was pleased Joe Williams had said 
he liked him and felt that this atonement reflected 
special credit on himself, “I’ve got a old pair of 
bags at home with a big patch on ’em, as I uses for 
gardenin’. I shall wear ’em to-morrow, casual 
like, for a few days, as if I was used to it, that’ll 
make him think less of it—he won’t feel so lonely 
like, so conspicuous.” 

“That’s a good notion,” Wat remarked. 


22 WITH THE GILT OFF 

Mr. Webling was proud of it himself, but dis¬ 
sembled. 

“That Joe Williams, he looks like he was a 
sensitive bloke, when you think of it, an’ I reckon 
we must have give him a hell of a time, so it’s up 
to us,” said one of the others, “to see if we can’t 

_ 99 

“We don’t want no damn sloppy sentiment over 
it, ” Mr. Webling checked him. “All you got to do 
is to shut up an’ be friendly. Let him see it’s done 
with, that’s enough.” 

“That’s right, Sam. Make him feel he’s as good 
as the best of us.” 

“You’ll see Edwards, Wat, ” urged Mr. Webling, 
“and let him know about this?” 

“I will; I’ll see him on the way home to-night.” 

“That’s all. What I say is, if there’s any little 
friendly thing in a quiet way you can think of to 
make him feel all’s well an’ we’re all pals together— 
why, do it.” 

With which farewell conjuration Mr. Webling 
left them. 

Early in the morning he set out for the Works 
complacently satisfied with himself. He was con¬ 
scious of the large patch behind him, and even 
though, for the time, his coat concealed it from the 


THE SEAT OF REPENTANCE 23 


public eye, the consciousness of it warmed him 
right through with a self-righteous glow. 

He climbed the stairs of his own department in 
the rambling old cabinet-making factory; but the 
moment he was inside the door he was seized with 
a strange dizziness, and paused. 

Joe Williams was at the far end of the room 
sorting some blocks of wood, but at the long bench 
stood the four other men, with their coats off and 
their backs to the door; and either through much 
dwelling on one consideration he had succumbed to 

an absurd illusion, or else- 

Wat Simkins looked round, and with a furtive 
glance at Williams, to see that he was beyond 
hearing, stepped across to Mr. Webling to vindi¬ 
cate himself. 

“You said do any little friendly thing we could 
think of, an’ I couldn’t think of nothing else,” he 
whispered hoarsely. “I had an old pair at home 
an’ thought two of us wouldn’t matter—might be 
better than one—but, blimey! if these other three 

damn idiots ain’t all-” 

He broke off abruptly, and, as Joe Williams 
turned, he resumed his place at the bench. 

Mr. Webling gazed confusedly along the four 
back views, and realised that his scheme of repen- 


24 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


tance had been transformed into an unqualified 
outrage; the victim would naturally assume that 
it was a deliberate attempt to caricature a dis¬ 
tressing feature of his wardrobe and cover him 
with more ridicule than ever. 

From these gloomy reveries, Mr. Webling was 
roused by Joe Williams, a brawny, genial, fair¬ 
haired giant, who was by this close upon him, and 
wishing him a cheery good-morning. 

“I’ve got the bulge of them this morning, Mr. 
Webling,” he said, winking in an ecstasy of amuse¬ 
ment. “They couldn’t let that patch o’ mine alone 
all last week, and here they all come with a big ’un 
on theirselves this morning to take a fresh rise out 
o’ me, an’ blow my buttons!” he fairly bubbled 
with laughter, “I’ve got a new pair!” 

Mr. Webling looked down and saw that he had. 

He stood thunderstruck, and Joe passed him. 

It was impossible to explain the situation and 
justify himself without wallowing in that sentimen¬ 
tality of which all of them were ashamed to be 
suspected. Mr. Webling recognised this, yet, in 
the circumstances, felt a kind of shyness against 
taking off his coat. 

Suddenly he began a frantic fumbling in his 
pockets. 


THE SEAT OF REPENTANCE 


25 


“By George!” he exclaimed, with apparent 
anxiety, “I’ve come without it. Wat!” he said 
briskly, “if I’m wanted, say I’ll be back in ten 
minutes—just goin’ to run round home to—to get 
something I left behind!” 


JENNY CHOOSES 

Lavender Row, which is in Hackney, was accus¬ 
tomed to sensations, and would not have been 
happy without them. During comparatively 
recent years it has been intimately concerned in an 
elopement, a judicial separation, two accidental 
deaths, and a variety of police-court cases touching 
upon more or less serious assaults and drunken 
disorders. For it is a long, dingy street given over 
to a large and very miscellaneous tenantry of the 
poorer kind. But never had the Row been so 
stirred to its grim depths, so blown with notoriety 
and unhallowed excitement, as it was on the occa¬ 
sion of Alf Jarvis’s sudden departure from it. 

His departure was final, and the manner of it 
was violent and mysterious. 

One night in autumn, a night of ghostly mists 
and no moon, Alf failed to come home. As he 
was not a man of regular habits this was nothing 
unusual. But in the morning his body was found 
lying on the mangy, green waste of London Fields 
26 


JENNY CHOOSES 


27 


—dead, with a savage gash in the throat that, 
according to medical opinion, could not have been 
self-inflicted. 

While he lived, nobody had been extravagantly 
fond of Alf, except perhaps his parents, and they 
were half afraid of him. A loafing, ill-conditioned 
ruffian, he had suffered imprisonment for one 
brutal outrage, and was strongly suspected of 
others that could not be brought home to him. 
Nevertheless, his death was commonly accepted 
in Lavender Row as a calamity; it was discussed 
as passi onately as if he had been a real loss to the 
locality, and men and women reaped glory in a 
small way by retailing his sayings and doings and 
posing as his friends. 

Those who could not, by any straining of pre¬ 
sumption, lay claim to such distinction as this were 
glad to listen to those who could, though they 
listened with envy. For Alf’s name loomed large 
in the newspapers; his portrait was there, too, 
with condensed biographies of him, unabridged 
reports of the crime, notes about his family, and 
as much other known detail, conjecture and anec¬ 
dote as the papers invariably treasure up about 
celebrities of national importance. 

One paper came out with portraits of his father 


28 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


and mother and the house in which they occupied 
two rooms; another gave a ground plan of London 
Fields, with a cross on the spot where the body 
had been discovered. Others printed scrappy 
interviews with bosom friends of Alf’s who had 
scarcely been on nodding terms with him while 
he was in the flesh, and men who could point to 
such published statements with the pride of author¬ 
ship lived, temporarily, on dizzy pinnacles up 
which outsiders climbed to them deferentially to 
snatch a lesser, remoter importance from having 
enjoyed the privilege of paying for their liquid 
refreshments. 

Day by day Lavender Row hummed with all 
the excitement of this. The police were at fault; 
they could find no clue to the murderer; and, 
throughout this thrilling period, of all who rose 
to local eminence by reason of their acquaintance 
with Alf, none rose higher than Jenny Cripps, 
nor took a subtler pride in the elevation, nor ap¬ 
pealed thence more prevailingly to public sen¬ 
timent. Yet few of the spurious friends of the late 
Alf Jarvis were less entitled to that distinction or 
that sympathy. 

Jenny lived with her mother in the house 
opposite to that in which Alf had lodged. She 


JENNY CHOOSES 


29 


earned a livelihood by work in a chocolate factory, 
and was a good-looking, vivacious girl, who, 
despite her share of native coquetry and love of 
dress and amusement, had a robust imagination 
and a ballast of common sense that stood her in 
good stead in a narrow, perilous world where it is 
not always easy to be happy for long without being 
unwise. Her good looks and good humour won her 
plenty of admirers, but she was difficult to please. 

She had owned to no preference for anybody 
until she began to walk out with Ben Gillet, and 
Ben’s triumph was not lasting. She quarrelled 
with him frequently, and, at length, offended by 
some fancied slight, sent him away in a moment 
of pique, and apparently transferred her affections. 

But Ben was not readily daunted. He was a 
dogged, steady-going fellow, a capable artisan, 
dwelling at a distance from the Row, and had come 
to know Jenny through meeting her at intervals as 
she walked to and from the chocolate factory. 
He went away when she sent him; but he returned, 
and returned again, with a tireless persistence that 
was presently rewarded; she found she did not 
care for his supplanter as she had cared for him, 
so he was forgiven and they were reconciled. 

Then, after an interval, she broke with him 


so 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


capriciously for a second time, and he departed 
into the wilderness of her displeasure, smarting 
under the knowledge that he had a new rival, who 
was far more dangerous than the old. 

This new rival was none other than the redoubt¬ 
able Alf Jarvis. Alf had set eyes upon Jenny, 
and, being moderately fascinated by her beauty 
and the challenge of her bright eyes, had pointedly 
honoured her with his attentions, and the fact that 
she was coy and exacting and not to be lightly won 
added an unwonted piquancy to his wooing, and 
made him the more bent upon winning her. 

On her part, it was probably not so much that 
she cared for him as that she was flattered at being 
singled out for admiration by one who was so 
peculiarly notorious. 

Before his solitary conviction had rendered the 
undue prominence too risky, Alf had been leader 
of a gang of young hooligans who were the terror 
of the neighbourhood; and since his release from 
durance he had been no less daringly lawless, but 
had carried out his exploits with a baffling cunning 
and secrecy that left the police no chance of en¬ 
trapping him. 

Rumour whispered that he was expert with a 
revolver, and, when a man was shot near by in a 


JENNY CHOOSES 


31 


street brawl, Alf was credited with the achieve¬ 
ment; but, though he was arrested on suspicion, no 
revolver could be traced to him, and there was no 
tangible evidence of his guilt. He was handy also 
with a knife, and free of his threats to use it; where¬ 
fore he was held in respect, and more timorous 
spirits looked up to him, toadied to him, and, even 
while they hated him and his tyranny, were glad 
to boast of his friendship and swagger under his 
patronage. 

It was no wonder, then, if Jenny was dazzled by 
the homage of so masterful a man. The wonder 
was that his dashing airs, the glamour of his crude 
greatness, the open hatred of one he had jilted and 
several he ignored for her sake, turned her head 
so little as they did. 

For awhile, however, she was so far warped from 
her better self by his sinister influence that the 
sight of Ben Gillet’s sombre, melancholy visage, 
when she flaunted past him in the streets, instead 
of touching her with compassion, only pleasantly 
titillated her preening self-complacency. 

If Ben had simply given her up, she might have 
felt some irritation; that he should haunt her 
miserably, seeking to move her to relent, gratified 
her vanity, while the mood lasted, as it must have 


32 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


gratified the Roman conqueror of old to see his 
hopeless captive shambling dejected by his chariot- 
wheel. 

And now, suddenly, at this critical juncture, 
before she could be quite sure of her own heart 
or Alf could overpersuade her, some unknown 
hand had abruptly torn him out of her life for ever. 

His tragic end filled her with horror and affected 
her with an emotional belief that she had really 
loved him. The tears she shed were tears of 
genuine sorrow. Her pity for him was so acute 
and she was so vividly conscious of the position 
she occupied in the public eye by reason of her 
tender association with the chief actor in this 
startling tragedy that, when the press reporters 
got hold of her name and put it about that she 
had been betrothed to him, she rather encouraged 
the idea than otherwise, and keenly appreciated 
the reputation and dignity that accrued to her 
from it. 

This development of the situation seeming to 
make it imperative, she trimmed her hat with 
crape and bought herself a cheap black dress, and 
in these habiliments was treated with distinguished 
consideration at the inquest, where, red-eyed and 
weeping, her outward acquiescence in the position 


JENNY CHOOSES 


33 


making her grief and bereavement curiously real 
to her, she sat on a front bench between Alf’s 
father and mother. 

Later, she was the most attractive figure and a 
chief mourner at the funeral—a sensational, largely 
attended funeral, which was paid for out of the 
proceeds of a special smoking-concert held in the 
big room over “The Bold Robin Hood’’ at the end 
of the Row. 

Altogether, it was a strange and grievous experi¬ 
ence, not unmingled with a certain pleasant sense 
of complacency, of which Jenny was dimly 
ashamed even while she indulged it. 

Nor was the whole affair buried at the funeral. 
It was kept very much alive by the circumstance 
that the police were still actively pursuing the 
murderer, and every now and then the papers 
announced darkly that they had obtained a clue 
and an arrest was momentarily expected. 

But no arrest was ever made. 

Alf had wronged many people and made numer¬ 
ous enemies; moreover, his companions were as 
brutal and lawless as himself. He might have 
been murdered out of revenge, or in the heat of a 
drunken fight—among a confusing multitude of 
such possibilities no trace of the culprit could be 


34 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


detected, and by degrees the search began to 
be abandoned. 

Meanwhile, though Ben Gillet made no attempt 
to intrude upon Jenny’s misery, he had not lost 
sight of her. Again and again she met him as she 
walked to the factory or home from it, and his wan, 
unhappy face reproached her in spite of herself. 
But strong still in the importance attaching to her 
almost widowed state, and too proud to own it in 
a hurry even if she suspected she had been in any 
way duping herself, she steeled her heart against 
him and coldly discouraged such hesitant attempts 
as he made to renew acquaintance with her. 

Once or twice, stung to desperation, he paused 
full in her path and spoke to her, but she froze 
him each time with the forbidding resentment of 
her gaze, and swept past without a word; till, 
crushed and reckless with despair, he could endure 
this state of things no longer, and forced her to 
make up her mind about him, once for all, by 
calling to see her in her own home. 

The front door of the house stood always open, 
for the convenience of the various lodgers, so he 
entered at will, and, before she was aware of his 
presence, was in the room where she sat at the 
table sewing, alone. 


JENNY CHOOSES 


35 


“You needn’t be afraid, Jenny,” he said quietly, 
closing the door and standing with his back to it. 
“I must speak to you—you’re breaking my heart, 
girl. I saw your mother go out, an’ came in hoping 
to find you by yourself. I want you to tell me the 
plain truth—and have done with it.” 

After a quick glance at his tense white face, she 
bent over her sewing again with an assumption of 
indifference, but her hands trembled, the tears 
stung under her eyelids, and she was surprised at 
her own sudden, unaccountable weakness. 

“You’re still wearing black,” he went on, with a 
dull composure. “I want to know, Jenny—what’s 
it all mean—did you love him—that man, or is 
it that you are only sorry for him?” 

“I shouldn’t wear black for him if I didn’t, 
should I?” she asked curtly. 

“Do you really mean that?” 

“Of course I do.” 

“But—but once you loved me, Jenny-” 

“No, I never did, then!” 

He waited, watching her thoughtfully. 

“I’ve been mistaken, then?” 

“I can’t help that.” 

She tossed her head proudly. 

“It’s all been a mistake—between me and you? 


36 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


You are quite, quite certain of that?” he urged 
anxiously. “Don’t, for God’s sake, fool me now, 
Jenny.” 

His terrible earnestness startled her, but she was 
in no yielding mood. 

“Who’s foolin’ you? You’ve no right to come 
here bullyin’ me, Ben Gillet, an’ the sooner you 
take yourself off the better.” 

He sighed heavily. 

“Very well,” he returned. “But if I’d been sure 
of this before, Jenny—perhaps things might have 
gone different. I would never have brought sorrow 
on you. I never believed—I couldn’t believe— 
you loved him. That’s where it was-” 

“It was no business of yours, anyhow,” she 
protested hotly. “What right have you to come 
here say in’ this to me?-” 

She bit her lip, and choked back a sob. 

“I’ll tell you, Jenny.” His dull, grim calmness 
seemed to increase her agitation. “That night 
Jarvis was murdered I happened to be cornin’ 
across the Fields an’ met him. He’d been drinkin’, 
but he knew me, and shouted words to me it was 
bitter hard to bear. But he was drunk, an’ I took 
no notice. I went on, but he turned an’ walked 
jeering and callin’ after me. I took no notice till 


JENNY CHOOSES 


37 


he shouted something about you—never mind 
what it was. He was a dirty swine and I knew it 
was a lie, but I couldn’t stand it. I ran back, mad, 
an’ smashed my fist into his face. Next minute 
his knife was out, an’ he was on to me. I caught 
him, an’ we rolled over atop of each other, an’ in 
the middle of it I got his wrist an’ wrenched the 
knife away-” 

He stopped, and she stared at him aghast. 

“I hated him,” he continued in a strained 
whisper, “but I’d never thought to do him harm. 
He’d have had me, if I hadn’t had him—and if I’d 
known what you’ve just told me I’d have let him, 

sooner than-” He paused, panting as if for 

breath, and resumed brokenly. “Now you know. 
It was me. I wanted you to tell me the plain truth, 
and now—I don’t care to hide it any longer. I 
never meant to tell you. . . . But I don’t care 
now. Nothing matters.” 

He struggled against the fierceness of his emotion 
and suppressed it. 

“You can give me up, Jenny. That’s why I’m 
telling you,” he said quietly. “Give me up and 
I’ll swing for it, and you’ll not be troubled with 
me any more. Go on! . . . Here. There it is.” 
With a hasty movement he flung a long-bladed 



38 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


knife down on the table before her. “That’s the 
knife. His knife. I’ll stop here—while you go 
for the police.” 

He ceased, and stood with his breast heaving, 
dully resolved. 

There was a moment of almost intolerable 
silence. 

Then the slow tread of Mrs. Cripps returning 
sounded in the passage. 

Instantly, Jenny started to her feet. 

He caught the look in her eyes, and a new light 
kindled in his own. 

“Ben!” she cried in an agony, under her breath. 
“I never meant it. It’s my fault. Oh, it was 
never really him. . . . Hush!” 

She broke off with a warning gesture as the door 
opened, and, snatching the knife from the table, 
thrust it into her pocket. 


A CASH ACCOUNT 


The big kitchen of the lodging-house was getting 
crowded. 

Two or three unpresentable guests stooped about 
the grate, one toasting a kipper in front of the fire, 
another scorching a scrag of beef over the top; 
a drab miscellany of derelicts, sodden and un¬ 
washed, or merely unwashed and tired, sat at the 
long deal table, gossiping monotonously or, lolling 
half-asleep, letting their pipes go out; or rousing 
to a tantalizing-sniff of the cooking and, with lazy 
glances toward the fire-place, dully speculating on 
forlorn chances of cadging a bite. 

The air was rank with pungent tobacco smoke, 
and each new arrival added to the thickness of it. 
From time to time, one or other rose yawning 
and climbed heavily upstairs to bed in his allotted 
cubicle; while Mr. Harris, the proprietor, strolled 
in and out at intervals, with a subtly quick ear for 
rising disturbances and a masterful hand for 
putting them down. From intimate experience, 


40 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


he knew precisely how far a quarrelsome lodger 
might be trusted before there was danger of his 
breaking into violence, and the instant that limit 
was reached he would stand listening intently, 
then suddenly point his formidable stick straight 
at the offender, and roar: 

“That’s enough! No more o’ that here. Time 
you was in bed. ’Op it. Off you go upstairs. 
Stow yer jaw, if yer don’t want me to break it 
for yer. Goin’, or ain’t yer?” 

And, sulky or grinning, according to his mood, 
the man addressed nearly always went without 
further trouble. 

No one looking at Mr. Harris could have guessed 
he was stone-blind; he was so familiar with every 
inch of his premises, patrolled them with such an 
easy, confident tread, and such an air of perfect 
self-reliance. Whenever he came into the kitchen 
his lodgers involuntarily modulated their voices, 
and those who had been noisiest eyed him dub¬ 
iously, sometimes ducking as he passed, as if to 
evade his notice, for he was so uncannily acute 
that few were altogether convinced that he really 
could not see them. 

Sunny George was one of the few. An old and 
fairly regular visitor, he sat smoking moodily. 


A CASH ACCOUNT 


41 


with his chin in his hands, talking with nobody, 
and taking no interest in Mr. Harris’s intermittent 
comings and goings. He spoke to nobody, until 
One-Legged Joe, lank and weedy and cheerful, 
stumped in fresh from the streets and dropped 
into a vacant seat beside him on the form. 

“’Cheer, Sunny,” Joe greeted him lightly. 
“’Ow’s things?” 

“Oh, damn!” Sunny George shook his hairy 
head and sighed. 

“Any luck?” 

“Broke to the wide.” 

“No use arstin’ you to stand a old pal a wet, 
then?” 

“That’s what I was wonderin’.” 

“An’ no use arstin’ you, o’ course, Stingy?” 
Joe nudged his other neighbour. 

“Arstin’ me what?” enquired Stingy, removing 
his pipe and wreathing his sly, unshorn visage in 
a sour grin. 

“To stand two old pals a drink to go to bed on?” 

“Don’t find nobody in such a ’urry to stand me 
one,” demurred Stingy. “I ’as to stand all my 
own, an’ takes me all my time to do it.” 

They were interrupted by an outbreak of shrill 
voices on the stairs. One of the cookers at the fire 


42 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


turned curiously, with his scrag of meat sizzling 
unheeded on the fork; the drowsiest sitters started 
into wakefulness and stared at each other or at 
Mr. Harris, who was making his round of the 
room at the moment and had paused with his 
stern face and terribly empty eyes turned toward 
the door-way. 

And blundering in at the door-way came a 
couple of frowsy, ringleted Italians, grimacing and 
gesticulating excitedly in the heat of a fiery 
argument. 

“It ees mine,” reiterated the taller of them. 
“I peek it up.” 

“I see it first,” insisted the shorter one. “I 
stoop to peek it up ven you push me and 
snatch-” 

“I say it ees damn lie!” 

“What’s the trouble, Carlo?” demanded Sunny 
George, leaning across the man who divided him 
from the taller Italian. “Give the bloke what 
belongs to ’ m, can’t yer?” 

“It not belong to heem,” retorted Carlo. “I 
see eet in ze mud—von silver half-crown. I peek 
it up quick; zen Antonio, here, he say gif it to 
heem, he see it first, but I say. No, No, eet is 


mine- 



A CASH ACCOUNT 


43 


“Ah-h-h! Damn lies, damn lies!” interrupted 
Antonio furiously. “I see eet soonest than zis 
tief, and he push me avay and snatch eet, and I 
say mine, but he say No. Zen I say I haf my 
share, but he say No. He say I not see eet till he 
haf got it, but I say lies, damn lies! ” 

Quivering with passion and suddenly losing his 
self-control, he abruptly grappled with Carlo and 
made as if he would have rifled his pockets. They 
clutched each other and staggered and fell and rose 
together, catching and tearing at each other with 
a rapidly increasing frenzy, till Sunny George 
stepped in and, grasping Carlo by the arm and 
Antonio by the neck, deftly flung them apart. 
He had no sooner separated them, however, than 
they rushed together again, and, after joining in 
the scramble for a moment in a vain effort to 
part them. Sunny George withdrew and left the 
conflict to take its course. It took a panting and 
wrestling and scuffling course for a brief space, 
then Carlo wrenched himself free of his compatriot, 
clapped his hand to his pocket, and yelled: 

“He haf rob me! He haf take my money. 
Tief! Ah-h-h!” 

“Diavolo!” gasped Antonio, beside himself with 
resentment. “I take it not. Ha!” 


44 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


They leaped at each other, and with sudden 
outcries of alarm and horror the men about the 
table sprang up; a form was overturned with a 
crash, and they scattered back in a widening 
circle against the walls—all but the two glaring, 
spluttering combatants, who were left in a clear 
space, dancing and dodging at one another on 
tiptoe, each with a gleam of steel in his hand and 
viciously alert for an opening. 

In the heat of the dispute everybody had for¬ 
gotten Mr. Harris, but now some of the onlookers 
became aware of him, where he stood, strained 
and taut, with a menacing, closely attentive look 
darkening his rugged face. 

“It’s knives, Mr. Harris!” babbled one of the 
cowering mob. “It’ll be murder—murder, if you 
don’t stop ’em.” 

The rest watched fascinated, while the two 
crouching figures circled and feinted, their blades 
flashing and twinkling perilously, as they darted 
forward and struck and swung their lithe bodies 
out of reach of the strokes; while Mr. Harris 
towered, dumb and motionless as a statue, his 
features sharpened to that curious listening acute¬ 
ness, as if his whole soul were in his ears, hearken¬ 
ing after the light pad, pad, pad and shuffle of 


A CASH ACCOUNT 


45 


the combatants’ feet, till, with a mighty sweep, 
before either was prepared, his big stick whirled 
down with a marvellous accuracy of aim and 
stretched Antonio with his hands clasped on his 
head, and, swift as lightning, flew up and down 
in a second stroke, and, the knife jerking from his 
quivering fingers, Carlo shrieked with agony and 
writhed, hugging his own right arm. 

As the knife struck the floor Mr. Harris, shrewdly 
alive to the sound of its fall, put his foot on it. 

“Now then,” he raged portentously, “out you 
go, yer blasted greasers, both of yer! Clear! If 
there’s to be any murdering here, by God, I’ll do 
it myself! Out you go! Are yer going?” Listen¬ 
ing sharply, he knew where they were by the sound 
of their muted cursings and smothered lamenta¬ 
tions, and, prompting them with curt jabs of his 
stick, blustered, “Out of it! D’yer hear? An’ 
don’t ask for your money back at the door, becos 
you won’t git it. I shall keep that to pay me for 
my trouble. It’s a ruddy menagerie you want, 
not a respectable lodging-house. Git!— None 
o’ yer lip. Don’t care whether ’e’s robbed you or 
you’ve robbed ’im. None o’ my business. One 
of yer’s got the ’arf-crown, and you can settle 
about that between yer outside. There’s 


46 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


more room there. Here! I’ve ’ad enough o’ 
this-” 

The big stick whirled aloft, and, as if someone 
had pressed a button and set them going, Carlo 
and Antonio rolled aside and scrambled to their 
feet, as the blow thudded on the floor. But, their 
hysterical protestations guiding him, Mr. Harris 
advanced upon them with a sinister assurance, 
rating, bullying, and feeling for them, striking and 
hitting as often as he missed, and so shepherded 
them from the room, up the narrow stairs, along 
the passage above, ruthlessly past the pay-box, 
and into the street. 

Quiet settled down on the kitchen. The lodgers 
resumed their seats at the table, pipes were re¬ 
lighted, and the bearings of what had happened 
were discussed with a leisurely and great tran¬ 
quillity. 

“Leggy,” Sunny George observed, at length, 
under cover of the general conversation, “I can 
stand yer one now, if yer want it.” 

“Oh, that’s where it went, is it?” Joe winked 
knowingly. “I’m on.” 

They sauntered casually toward the door, but 
Stingy came discreetly after them and laid a de¬ 
taining hand on George’s arm. 


A CASH ACCOUNT 


47 


“ ’Arf a mo, matey! I seen yer take it,” he said 
huskily. “Ain’t yer goin’ to stand me one as 
well?” 

“Seen me take what?” asked George, with 
simulated innocence. 

Stingy grinned. 

“My pal there, Peter the Pedlar,” he whispered 
significantly, “he seen yer take it, too. Better 
arst ’im to come an’ have one with us, then there 
won’t be no difficulties.” 

“’Ow many more of yer?” grumbled Sunny 
George. “Oh, well, if you seen me, an’ so long as 
it’s only four of us—come on!” He signalled to 
Peter with a jerk of his head. “But if there’s any 
more cornin’ in on this treat, blimey, I’ll give the 
blarsted coin to Mr. ’Arris an’ wash my ’ands of 
it.” 

They passed unostentatiously up the dark stairs 
and out of the house. Seeing the Italians still 
wrangling in the distance, with a pair of policemen 
now joining in the argument, they turned in the 
opposite direction and filed into a bleary little 
tavern a few doors up the street. 

“What’s it to be?” asked George expansively. 

“Make it a pint all round,” urged Stingy, “seein’ 
it’s found money an’ you don’t lose by it.” 


48 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“You mean you don’t lose by it.” George eyed 
him scornfully, but yielded with a laugh. “’Ope 
you’ll be as free with yer own, Stingy, next time 
I meets yer. Landlord, four beers—pints.” 

The landlord did some sleight of hand with the 
beer-pull, and conjured four foaming tankards on 
to the counter, and Sunny George, after some 
fumbling in his vest pocket, slapped the half- 
crown on the sloppy counter. 

“Well, lads, here’s to us!” he cried cheerily, 
“an’ may we always get drinks as easily.” 

The four tankards were lifted and put down 
more than half empty. 

In the interval, the landlord had paused on his 
way to the cash register to give a startled look at 
the coin in his hand. He showed it hurriedly to 
the stalwart barman, muttered some brisk instruc¬ 
tions to him, then returned to the counter and 
threw the coin down on it discontentedly. 

“What d’yer call this?” he demanded. “Take 
it from me—if you think I’m a damn fool, you’re 
mistaken. What’s the game?” 

George picked the shining coin up gingerly, and 
as he examined it his jaw dropped. 

“Why,” he faltered, “what is it? I took it 
for a bleed’n ’arf-crown.” 


A CASH ACCOUNT 


49 


“Oh! well,” sneered the landlord, “you don’t 
git me to take it for that. You never see a ’arf- 
crown before, I suppose, an’ think it’s all right to 
’ave one with a church on the back of it, an’ a ’ole 
to put a bit o’ ribbon through, do yer?” 

Sunny George swore softly to himself. 

“I never noticed the damn thing before,” he said, 
“an’ it’s all the money I’ve got, guvner.” 

“Money!” snarled the landlord. 

“Nothin’ to do with me, mister,” interposed 
Stingy. “My friend, ’ere, he’s standin’ treat, 
so you’ll ’ave to settle with ’im.” 

“Shall I?” enquired the landlord dangerously. 
“We’ll see! You’re all in this swindle, an’ you can 
all settle with the cops. I don’t care which pays, 
but, if one of yer don’t, I’ll put the whole pack of 
yer away, an’ quick, too.” 

Stingy turned, with a notion of departing, but 
the door was shut and the stalwart barman stood 
with his back against it. 

“No business o’ mine, I tell yer,” blustered 
Stingy. “I shan’t pay. You no right to stop me. 
Let me out. Come on!” 

The barman stood immovable, and the landlord 
leaned calmly over the other bar to address an 
invisible customer in the next compartment. 


50 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


"Just look out o’ that door,” he said, "an’ see 
if there’s a slop outside. Arst ’im to step in. I 
want ’im for a bunch o’ crooks I’ve got ’ere.” 

Whereupon, after a despairing outburst of in¬ 
dignation, Stingy collapsed—he counted a pile 
of coppers into the landlord’s palm, the barman 
stood aside, and the four filed sadly out. 

"I believe you knowed all along what it was,” 
Stingy raved. 

"How could I?” protested George. "I seen the 
Italian tap ’is pocket, an’, when I ’ad the chance, I 
nipped the money out an’ into my own without 
stoppin’ to look at it. I never looked at it till 
the landlord showed it to us. An’ you’re the only 
one of us that’s got any other money—an’, besides 
it’s yer own fault. You would come. I never, 
arst yer. ” 

"Where is it? Give it to me,” Stingy insisted 
savagely. "I’ve’ad to pay for it. It’s mine.” 

"Oh, you shall ’ave it, all right ole pal.” And 
Sunny George gave it to him. "You’ll never be 
able to pass it, but if ever you wants to sign the 
pledge it’ll save you the price of a medal, that will.” 


ON THE WAY BACK 


i 

“Oh, well, she’s done better without him.” 

“An’ bin much happier, she says.” 

“Yes, and it’s cornin’ home to him now. See 
how he likes bein’ served same as he served her.” 

The three gossips shook their bonnetless heads 
in unison, and fretted the sunny morning with a 
cackle of ironical laughter. 

“But he deserves it,” added one of them, “an’ 
she didn’t.” 

“She had to work mortal hard—but she’s done 
well. Providence looks arter its own, Mrs. Hoole.” 

“Sometimes, maybe.” 

“It’s looked arter her, anyhow. It ain’t every 
woman as could have managed as comfortable 
as she’s done these seven years, since he took up 
with that good-for-nothing hussy an’ left her.” 

“She’s had luck as well as pluck; that’s where 
it is. One ain’t much good without the other, 

51 


52 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


an’ she’s had both. She started chicken-farmin' 
an’ market-gardenin’ to keep herself, after Tom 
Pardoe chucked her—that was pluck. But she 
hadn’t been doin’ it a year when that miserly old 
uncle of hers died an’ left her a nice bit o’ money an’ 
his pony an’ trap—that was luck. She couldn’t 
ha’ bought that extry plot o’ ground next to her 
own if she hadn’t had that money, an’ she couldn’t 
have travelled so fur round to all the villages gettin’ 
orders an’ deliverin’ the goods if she hadn’t had 
that trap.” 

“Yes, an’ if Tom Pardoe had never left her, he’d 
have spent all her money for her as fast as she 
made it; so she’s had luck all round.” 

“That’s right. Wonder what he’ll be doin’ 
now—now that he’s bin left hisself?” They 
laughed in chorus again. “Did you say anything 
to her about him, Mrs. Hoole? D’yer think she 
knows about him?” 

“Oh, she knows well enough. Everybody 
knows. I did just drop a hint to her, but you know 
what she is—she won’t never talk of him—always 
pretends she don’t care what he does, or where he 
is, or anything about him.” 

“Perhaps she don’t.” 

“P’raps not.” 


ON THE WAY BACK 


53 


But Mrs. Hoole said it doubtfully, and some¬ 
thing of her doubt lay under the silence that fell 
upon them all as they stood at the street corner 
and arched their hands over their eyes to stare 
thoughtfully after the distant cart in which Mrs. 
Pardoe was jolting away out of the little east- 
country town up the dusty white high-road to¬ 
wards home. 

She was a tall, hard-knit, shapely figure of a 
woman verging on fifty; the firm brown hands that 
held the reins were roughened with toil; her hair, 
hidden now in a flapping sunbonnet, was streaked 
with grey, and across her broad brow and at the 
corners of her mouth were sharp-cut lines that had 
come more of trouble than of age. 

Past outlying cottages, away out of Walden 
town between a mile or more of green hedgerows, 
over the canal bridge into Highbeach village, 
through the thriving, straggling village street of 
squat shops and tiled houses, where she knew and 
exchanged greetings with everybody she met; out 
over another bridge, up another mile or so of 
dusty high-road, and then the pony stopped of its 
own accord at the wooden gates of her solitary 
cottage. 

A small, thatched cottage of wood and plaster. 


54 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


standing, in the middle of an extensive kitchen 
garden, with a wide path up to the door and branch¬ 
ing round to certain wooden, tarred outhouses at 
the rear. A dozen pear trees on one side of the 
garden and twice as many plum trees on the other 
helped to break the monotony of the vast stretch 
of flat landscape thereabouts, and took the edge of 
bleakness off the desolate look of the cottage itself. 
A loutish hired man, who was digging potatoes, 
came to open the gate, and, leaving him to stable 
the pony and put the cart away, Mrs. Pardoe went 
indoors. 

A sturdy, ancient handmaiden, who kept the 
cottage in order and assisted to cultivate the 
chickens and the garden, met her in the narrow 
lobby with a letter. 

“For me, Betty?” cried Mrs. Pardoe, taking it 
from her. “Why, who’s this bin writhT to me?” 

The envelope was addressed in a crude, un¬ 
practised hand and bore the London postmark. 
She had not expected it, and wondered that its 
coming surprised her so little; but, though she 
still affected not to recognise the writing, instead 
of following Betty into the kitchen she shut herself 
in the spotless, prim parlour, and opened the 
letter in secret. 


ON THE WAY BACK 


55 


Betty thought she would mention it over dinner; 
but she did not; she was unusually preoccupied 
all the afternoon, though she went about her work 
much as usual. 

Next morning, she drove off with her baskets 
full of eggs and fruit and vegetables, and a chicken 
or two that had been killed and plucked ready 
for roasting; and she came home with the same 
ruminant mood still upon her. After dinner that 
day, she withdrew into the parlour again and was 
there alone, very quiet, until dusk was gathering; 
then she came out carrying a sealed letter, and, 
without a word to anybody, tramped down the 
long road to the village and posted it herself. 

ii 

Before she could bring herself to the writing of 
that letter Rachel Pardoe had gone back in remem¬ 
brance over many things it was hard to forgive 
and harder to forget. 

She had married, when she was nearly thirty, 
a man who was in every way unsuited to her. 
Why she had loved him, why in her inmost heart 
she loved him even yet, she could not have said. 
But she loved him, and married him, and for 


56 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


twelve years they lived together in Walden, near 
the river. 

Tom Pardoe was skipper of a sailing barge that 
carried cargo to and from London. He was rarely 
at home for more than three or four days at a 
time, while his barge was reloading at the wharf, 
and it was not long before both Rachel and he 
began to wish those intervals were fewer and 
farther apart. For she was scrupulously neat in 
her habits, and rigidly religious, whilst he was 
slovenly and disposed to dissipation. She was 
troubled by his wickedness, and he by her piety; 
she would go to church twice on a Sunday, while 
he lounged at home half-dressed, till the “Jolly 
Tar” was opened, and cursed the cold dinner he 
had to eat because she had scruples against cook¬ 
ing on the Sabbath. 

They had no children. He made a great griev¬ 
ance of that, and, though she was silent about it, 
it was as great a grievance to her. He was 
strangely fond of children, who invariably took 
to him, and she often told herself, with a dull ache 
at her heart, that if there had been little ones of 
their own to welcome him on his home-comings 
things would have gone far better with them both; 
the “Jolly Tar” might have seen less of him, and 


ON THE WAY BACK 


57 


they would have won a hold upon his affection 
that she alone could never hope to obtain. 

By imperceptible degrees, they became almost 
entirely estranged; and there befell a day when 
his barge returned to its moorings at the wharf 
near by, but he did not come home to her. She 
was not disquieted much at first; more than once 
lately he had preferred the bar parlour of the 
“Jolly Tar” and his bunk in the cabin of his barge 
to her austere company and the immaculate neat¬ 
ness of his own cottage, and she was too proud to 
seek him or to enquire after him. 

But he had never been back to her since then. 
Within a day or two it came to her that he had 
taken up with a young woman whom rumour had 
before associated with him, and that he had got 
together another home not far off along the river¬ 
side and was living with her there. 

Rachel sent back some money he posted to her, 
and uttered no regret or complaint, and the neigh¬ 
bours told each other that she had ceased to care 
for him, and was glad to be free of the burden of 
his follies. But, then, they never saw her in her 
quiet room, when the world was shut out and she 
was secure from curious eyes. 

While he was absent from Walden on his next 


58 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


voyage she quitted the house that had been his 
and crossed the river to the solitary cottage 
beyond Highbeach, and there settled down, with 
the practical common-sense that was native to 
her, to earn a living for herself. 

In the seven years that followed, at rare inter¬ 
vals, when she was driving into Walden, she had 
passed her husband in the streets and affected not 
to see him. He made no attempt to speak to her, 
and she only knew from casual talk that he was 
still sojourning contentedly with the woman for 
whom he had deserted her, and that they had two 
children. 

Less than a month ago, as she drove into the 
town, she had seen him, all alive with boisterous 
merriment, running races with his boy on the high¬ 
road; and, driving back, she caught a glimpse of 
him over the hedges, rolling and rioting in the 
deep grass with both his children, himself as 
noisily and childishly happy as either. That was 
the bitterest moment she had known, and the old 
ache was renewed in her heart at the sight of them. 

They were not hers, those children, and she felt 
that, while they lived, they would bind him 
assuredly to the woman who had taken her place. 
And yet here, at last, when it had seemed so certain 


ON THE WAY BACK 


59 


she had lost him for ever, he had written to ask if 
she could forgive him and let him come home to 
her. 

“I daresay you have heard,” he wrote, “how 
that bitch has served me. While I was away last 
voyage she married old Stevens the boat-builder 
by licence—actually married the old fool. Of 
course, she’s only after his money and must have 
bewitched him. She made him promise she should 
keep the children; that’s all I care about. If I 
could get them she might go and good riddance. 
But she’s too cunning, and I can’t get them, and 
don’t suppose I could even if I went to law. . . . 
It serves me right, Rachel, and makes me guess 
what it’s been to you. I treated you shameful 
and am so lonely and wretched I’d shoot myself 
as soon as not. I spoilt your life, and now she’s 
spoilt mine. I don’t know what to do. If you 
can let bygones be bygones, Rachel, and give me 
another chance, I will promise on my oath to be a 
better man to you. I am older than I was, and I 
miss you terrible. If it hadn’t been for the child¬ 
ren I’d not have stopped with her this long. I 
never cared for her like I loved you. ...” 

She tried not to remember what her life had 
been with him, and would not think how little his 


60 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


promises were worth; he had offered her the one 
excuse she had always allowed for him and had 
touched her by giving words to the blind belief 
she had always clung to—that he never loved the 
other woman as he had loved her. 

She could not resolve to answer him imme¬ 
diately, as he asked her to, but her heart was 
empty and hungry, and she knew she must yield. 
She held out for a night and a day; then her pride 
was altogether broken down, and she wrote to 
him, and told him he could come. 


hi 

From the back door of her cottage Rachel could 
look out over the vast estuary of the Blackwater, 
widening in one direction seaward, and in the other 
split by a long, jutting island into a broad and a 
narrow channel, the broad making a sweep round 
the farther shore of the island up to Walden, the 
narrow running past the nearer shore of it and 
tapering on through Highbeach; whilst, nearer 
still, streams and dykes and gullies came branching 
inland to overflow when the tide was high and fill 
the treacherous pits and hollows that intersected 


ON THE WAY BACK 


61 


the marshy, sodden fields that breathed their mists 
in nightly over her garden palings. 

Watching from the back of her cottage two days 
after she had written to Tom Pardoe, Rachel saw 
his barge grow out of the seaward haze and, gliding 
up the broad waterway that led to Walden, vanish 
behind the island. She knew it was his barge by 
the flag at the mast-head and by the brown patch 
on the big red sail. A few weeks ago she had seen 
it go past like that, and it had meant nothing to 
her; now it meant more than she could have said. 

To-night he would be home again. 

The sky was heavy with clouds, and as the 
twilight deepened a wind rose and, blowing across 
from the far-off opposite shore, whipped the in¬ 
coming tide into crested waves and flung them 
splashing and shattering high up the pebbly 
beach that fringed the fields below; and in every 
pause of the wind a sleety rain fell. 

So with her own hands Rachel kindled a cheery 
fire in the parlour, and, bringing them from some 
secret hiding-place, ranged on the mantelpiece 
portraits of Tom, and of Tom and herself together, 
that had not seen the light since he went away 
from her last. 

She was anxious that everything should speak 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


a welcome to him when he came; that he should 
feel, as she was feeling, the tide was on the turn, 
and would bear them back to something of the 
happiness that had been theirs when they were 
younger. 

At nine o’clock she sent old Betty to bed, and 
postponed supper until he was there to have it 
with her. She replenished the fire in the parlour 
and sat by it listening for his footfall on the path 
without; but only the wind soughed round the 
creaking walls, and the intermittent rain pattered 
dismally on the window. 

She did not begin to give up hope of him until 
eleven. Then she was seized with a dread that he 
had gone to that other woman and succeeded in 
making his peace with her; or had lingered late 
drinking, as his habit was of old, and with this sus¬ 
picion came a cold fear that perhaps she had been 
foolish to relent—that, being still as he had been, 
he would return merely to mar her peaceful, com¬ 
fortable days with the incompatibilities and dis¬ 
cords that had so wearied her before. 

But the next minute she was reproaching herself 
for judging him so harshly, soothing herself with 
a calculation that he could not have received her 
letter. She ought to have replied instantly, as he 


ON THE WAY BACK 


63 


had begged her to; the unkind doubts of him and 
her false pride were to blame for this disappoint¬ 
ment, and her letter going too late had not been 
delivered in London till after he had sailed. 

The longer she reflected on it the clearer she saw 
that this was what must have happened, and, in a 
pleasant ecstasy of remorse, she made up her mind 
to humble herself by way of atonement and drive 
to-morrow to where his barge was moored in 
Walden and explain and bring him home with her. 

Withal, she sat waiting for him, forlornly hope¬ 
ful, till the wheezy grandfather clock in the kitchen 
struck twelve; then she went reluctantly to bed. 

But sleep was impossible to her. She lay hearing 
the wind blow in wild gusts across the heaving 
waters and across the dreary, marshy wastes where 
the treacherous pits and hollows were full to the 
brim with overflowings of the sea. Once the door 
downstairs rattled so loudly, and she was so sure 
that somebody was knocking and calling, that she 
threw a shawl round her hurriedly and went down 
with a candle. The wind dashed the door open, 
directly she unlatched it, and blew the light out, 
but nobody was there; nothing was there but the 
rainy wind that plunged howling in upon her from 
the hollow blackness of the night. 


64 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


The day broke sunless, and Rachel was out 
feeding her chickens an hour before breakfast. 

As she moved mechanically about her accus¬ 
tomed tasks, a sound of voices reached her, and, 
standing to look, she saw three labourers, who had 
been shoring up an embankment, stooping above a 
motionless bulk which they had just drawn out 
from one of the steep, deep pits in the field to the 
rear of her garden palings. 

The air was so still that she could hear clearly 
what they were saying from two hundred yards 
away. 

“I seen him, poor chap, late last night drinkin’ 
in the ‘Jolly Tar/ in Highbeach yonder. He’d 
had more than was good for him an’ couldn’t 
hardly keep his feet even then.” 

“Ah! He must ha’ missed the road in the dark 
an’ come blunderin’ across the marsh here an’ 
simply stepped head over heels into the pit, poor 
devil.” 

“Can’t leave it lyin’ here. What we best do 
with it?” 

They dropped their tones till she could not hear 
what they said; but she knew, for one of them had 
half turned round and was pointing to her cottage. 


THE LAST CHAPTER 

The yellow blinds were drawn down to shut out 
the fierce glare of the sun; the open windows 
seemed gasping in suffocation, but could catch no 
breath of air; and the long, quiet ward, with its 
dreary vista of bedridden patients, was oppres¬ 
sively close. 

Two Sisters, chatting in listless undertones, sat 
by a small table near the open doorway. Dull 
yellow shadows of the blinds chequered the floor at 
regular intervals; a sickly miasma of hyacinths 
and medicines thickened the dry, hot atmosphere 
and put a thought of death into the brooding quiet 
of the place. 

Presently a door slammed somewhere on the 
other side of the building, and a flying echo flapped 
and fluttered headlong down the great stone corri¬ 
dor without, plunged into the waiting silence, and 
was instantly stifled. 

Then another sound grew out of the stillness, 

65 


66 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


and the echoing corridor was fretted by crisp 
footfalls. 

“Chaplain,” muttered one of the nurses; and 
the other mechanically took up some sewing. 

The Chaplain came in—a spare, pale man of 
fifty, with large, mild eyes and a pensive kindly 
expression. He shook hands with the nurses, and 
stood talking with them in undertones. 

“And how is the new patient—No. 20?” 

“He had a good night and seemed a little better 
this morning, but doctor says there is no hope— 
he can’t last many days.” 

“Poor fellow!” 

He moved off along the melancholy avenue of 
narrow beds, glancing to right and left on weary, 
white faces of men who were asleep, and lingering 
awhile, here and there, to speak in sympathetic 
murmurs to such as happened to be awake. No. 
20 had watched his approach with evident interest, 
and greeted his arrival with a wan, peculiar smile 
which the other was puzzled to interpret. 

“You were asleep when I came through the 
ward yesterday,” observed the Chaplain, seating 
himself by the bedside. 

“Not really. I saw you,” No. 20 said feebly, 
“but I kept my eyes shut—I didn’t want to have 


THE LAST CHAPTER 


67 


anything to say to anybody just then—I was 
feeling pretty bad.” 

“You are better to-day?” 

“Not much. ... I was sorry, though, yester¬ 
day, after you’d gone. I only saw you for a 
moment, but it struck me at once that I’d seen you 
before. When I opened my eyes you’d passed on. 
I worried myself to death trying to think where it 
was I’d seen you—and couldn’t; till I asked Sister 
what your name was.” 

“Yes? And do you know me?” 

“Don’t you remember me at all?” 

The Chaplain looked critically at the shrunken, 
haggard face on the pillow, and shook his head. 
His eyes wandered to the card hung above the bed, 
and he read the patient’s name on it—“Richard 
Fairfax.” 

“You don’t know the name,” said the other, 
following his gaze. “I’ve changed it once or 
twice since we met last. You knew me by my own 
respectable, original name, Richard Marston.” 

“Never!” The Chaplain started and, leaning 
forward, scanned the worn features again, with a 
twilight recognition glimmering in his eyes. “I 
should never have known you. You are sadly 
changed.” 


68 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“In more ways than one,” Marston laughed 
wryly. “And the beard makes a big difference.” 

He reached out a wasted hand, which the Chap¬ 
lain grasped with a sort of shy cordiality, and, the 
first excitement of their strange meeting having 
spent itself, they drifted easily into intimate talk 
of far-away days and old friends. 

“I suppose I’ve come to as bad an end as the 
worst of them,” said Marston. 

The Chaplain muttered deprecatingly. 

“But it is the end. No good pretending it 
isn’t!” cried the sick man with feeble recklessness. 
“I shall be carried out of here feet first within a 
week, and I’m not sorry either. I’m about tired of 
everything.” 

A spasm of pain distorted his features, and 
brought a clammy sweat oozing through his 
parched skin. 

“What have I been doing with myself all these 
years?” he answered when the agony subsided. 
“You wouldn’t like to hear most of it. I’ve been 
all over the world, doing everything I ought not 
to have done nearly all the time. I’ve just gone to 
the devil, and you know who first sent me on the 
way there, don’t you?” 

The Chaplain maintained a grave silence. 


THE LAST CHAPTER 


4 ‘We were simple and she fooled us both,” 
chuckled Marston, fluctuating momentarily be¬ 
tween flippancy and earnestness. “I used to hate 
you then, because I thought you were the lucky 
man. But she never cared a straw for either of us. 
My God!—but I loved her then, Ireton! I don’t 
believe you ever cared for her as I did—nobody 
could. She was playing with us—no more heart 
than a fish, damn her! Sorry. ... Of course, 
she took that other fellow—I forget his name—for 
his money. It was impossible to believe it of her— 
then. Youth—youth, how good it is, but what an 
ass, Ireton! When I heard it, I could have shot 
myself. Went mad, straight off, and I’ve been 
mad, one way or another, ever since. . . * It 
burnt you a little, too, I suppose?” 

“At the time,” the Chaplain grudgingly 
admitted. 

“Ah! But you were one of the quiet sort, who 
never catch anything too bad to be cured by a 
poultice. I daresay it spoilt your appetite for a 
day; then you got up next morning, combed your 
hair, put on a clean collar, and ... by the way, 
though, you were going in for the Law in those 
days, weren’t you? How did you come to adopt 
the Church?” 


70 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


The Chaplain blushed. 

“I think we have talked quite enough. Too 
long,” he said nervously. “The doctor will be 
blaming me for letting you excite yourself.” 

Marston glanced up at him curiously, and his 
heavy eyes twinkled. 

“Don’t say she had anything to do with it!” 

The Chaplain flushed and frowned, and shook 
his head. 

“Well,” Marston went on, with a grim archness, 
“it’s a queer drink that makes one man drunk and 
another sober. . . . Don’t go for a minute, old 
fellow. It doesn’t excite me a bit to talk about her 
now—how could it after all these years? It used 
to, I admit. But I am no love-sick youngster now. 
There have been other women since her—too many 
of them. I’d about forgotten her till the sight of 
you yesterday reminded me. One time I was 
always remembering, and trying hard not to 
remember, her voice, her eyes. ... I believed I 
used to think of her, even when I cursed her and 
said she’d sold herself to the highest bidder, as you 
might think of an angel in heaven, and everything 
I did to forget her seemed to sink me farther away 
from her. What sentimental loonies we all are, 
Ireton! Do you know, even yet, when I think 


THE LAST CHAPTER 


71 


about her—I was thinking of her in the night (all 
through you reminding me)—it’s rather like 
thinking of prayers you’ve given up saying. You 
know how I mean. . . . Have you seen anything 
of her—since?” 

The Chaplain shook his head. 

“Twenty years,” said Marston, musingly. . . . 
“Ever heard of her?” 

“In a way—occasionally. Her husband, the 
Honourable Paul Ainsleigh-” 

“That’s the name. I couldn’t think of it.” 

“He is a prominent man in politics, and she is 
popular in society. I saw in the papers a few days 
ago that they have been travelling but are back in 
town again.” 

“Here—in London? Oh, of course, they would 
have a place here.” 

“In Grosvenor Square.” 

“I can’t imagine her in London. I always see 
her in that sunny old garden—you remember the 
garden?—and now and then, once upon a time, the 
sight of flowers made my heart ache.” 

The Chaplain coughed, and referred to his 
watch; and being, by now, fatigued and sleepy, 
Marston made no further effort to detain him. 

Their common misfortune was, in some subtle. 


72 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


indefinable fashion, as a tie of brotherhood betwixt 
them. They had compassion for each other, each 
knowing by personal experience what the other 
had suffered. Ireton, whose memories of the past 
had long been frozen into silence, was stirred and 
disquieted by the fervid utterance this friendless 
outcast gave to regrets that had once been also his. 
It broke up the ice of many winters and set old 
founts of feeling flowing darkly again through his 
veins. It unsettled him; troubled him; withal, he 
was strangely drawn towards this man, who was so 
linked with his dead yesterdays, and anxious for 
his welfare. 

Late at night he went to the door of the dim 
ward to ask after him; and next morning he saw, 
with a genuine concern, that he was much altered 
for the worse. His eyes were bright and restless, 
his gaunt face greyer, his hand more feverish. 

“I was hoping you’d come,” he said hoarsely. 
“I had almost made up my mind to send for you.” 

“I’d have come earlier if I had known.” 

“I say, I dreamt about her last night. Seemed 
too real to be a dream. Odd, wasn’t it? Then I 
woke up, and couldn’t get her out of my mind, and 
it kept me awake. I kept thinking and thinking 
of her, till all that old business was as near as if it 


THE LAST CHAPTER 


73 


had only happened last week. Do you know . . . 
I want to ask a favour, Ireton. ... I say, I hope 
you won’t think me delirious or a hopeless lunatic, 
will you?” 

He laughed awkwardly, and, before the other 
could answer, resumed: 

“I’ve got a most awful hankering to see her 
again. A sort of hungry, thirsty longing to see her 
again, old chap. I don’t understand it, but it has 
taken such hold on me that I can’t get rid of the 
idea. I simply feel I must see her once more 
before I’ve done with everything. A sick man’s 
fancy, I expect, but it’s no good—I can’t shake it 
off. Do you think she would come if she knew? 
I believe she would.” 

He spoke rapidly, eagerly, yet in such weak, 
muffled tones that, though the patient in the next 
bed was awake and listening, he could not over¬ 
hear what was said. 

“It would not be wise,” began Ireton, vaguely 
scared by the suggestion. “It would only upset 
you. It would be very painful-” 

“No, it wouldn’t. Not low. I know I haven’t 
got more than a day or two left—I might go off 
to-day, and I feel somehow as if I must see her— 
just for the last time. We’re not likely to meet 


74 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


afterwards,” he laughed grimly, “and it seems as if 
I’d made up my mind I can’t go without seeing her 
once more. If I can see her—I shan’t care then— 
I’ll be satisfied. . . . Look here, Ireton, will you 
go and ask her? Don’t say you won’t, and don’t 
try to persuade me not to see her. It keeps me all 
unsettled—wanting to see her. You’d go and try, 
if you knew how I feel.” 

He was so tremulously eager, so piteously in 
earnest, that Ireton had not the heart to refuse or 
to reason with him, and, seeing his halting attempts 
at dissuasion were completely futile, yielded and 
was gone, and speeding in a taxi towards Gros- 
venor Square before he fairly realised the extremely 
unusual and delicate character of his mission. 

One minute he was overwhelmed with a sense 
of his folly in thus humouring the extravagant 
whim of a man who was too ill to know quite 
what he was doing, and he was seized with a fear 
that she would consider his request an imperti¬ 
nence and resent it; but the next moment he was 
reproving himself for crediting her with so little 
womanly sympathy. Then, in a flash, his mind 
was dazzled with a vision of her as he had known 
her—gracious and sweet and girlishly beautiful. 
So recollecting her, he recollected also wild. 


THE LAST CHAPTER 


75 


passionate things he had said to her, and how she 
had once given herself to his arms and he had 
thought he was happy in her love, and he shrank 
ashamedly now, as at the thought of some indeli¬ 
cacy, from the prospect of seeing her again, and 
could not have forced himself to go on if he had 
not been haunted by those sleepless eyes that were 
watching for his return. 

Every nerve in his body was quivering with the 
intensity of his excitement. Over and over again 
he asked himself: Would she recognise him? 
How would she receive him? What should he say 
to her? Remembrance of the witchery of her 
presence began alternately to draw him on and to 
repel him, and, still agitated by these bewildering 
impulses, he presently found himself knocking at 
the door of the house in Grosvenor Square. 

He did not send in his name, but bade the foot¬ 
man tell Mrs. Ainsleigh that the Chaplain of St. 
Simeon’s Hospital urgently desired to see her. 

As he mechanically followed the man upstairs, 
after losing his last hope while he waited for his 
message to be taken in, his bewilderment increased 
to a sort of frenzy, till he became aware, with a 
curious sense of having suddenly revived from a 
swoon, that he was in a spacious, pleasantly 


76 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


appointed drawing-room, and that a portly lady, 
who had risen at his entrance, was cooingly, some¬ 
what gushingly wishing him good morning. 

She was utterly strange to him. She was stout 
of figure and plump of face; an affable indifference 
peered from her placid eyes; her features were 
rather blunt and coarse, and her cheeks were artis¬ 
tically powdered. 

“Mrs. Ainsleigh?” 

It was himself that spoke, yet the voice had an 
alien sound. 

“Ye-es. Won’t you sit down?” 

He being a clergyman from a hospital she 
vaguely anticipated an appeal for some kind of 
patronage. 

“I have called,” he stammered. “I have ven¬ 
tured to call on an errand which—which—for 
which I trust you will forgive me. It is most 
unusual, but—I have called on behalf of a patient 
at St. Simeon’s Hospital—a Mr. Richard 
Marston.” 

“Ye-es? I seem to know the name-” 

She smiled vacuously, and paused for him to 
proceed. 

To sit there and regard this woman, grown so 
unlike all he had ever known and dreamed of her. 



THE LAST CHAPTER 


77 


numbed and stupefied him. He had never fore¬ 
seen such a grotesque transformation, and could 
not convince himself of its reality. Yet he knew 
well enough it was she, and was stung with an odd 
humiliation that this should be his saint, his god¬ 
dess, the woman who had cast so deep a shadow 
over his life and influenced it so profoundly. 

“Mr. Richard Marston,” he repeated absently; 
then, recovering himself—“Mr. Marston used to 
know you—many years ago, before you were 
married.” 

“I have known so many men,” she laughed self¬ 
consciously. “Ye-es. The name is familiar to 
me. How interesting! How sad! Of course— 
yes, there was a Mr. Marston—I knew him very 
well. Dear, dear! And is he in the hospital? 
Not very ill, I hope? Nothing dangerous?” 

As briefly as might be, Ireton disposed of her 
enquiries, and made her acquainted with the object 
of his call. 

“Really? And he wants to see me again? 
How very romantic of him! I daresay he has told 
you we used to be boy and girl sweethearts— 
nothing serious,” she smiled archly. “Oh, yes, I 
remember him very—very well. And he has asked 
—dear me, how strange of him!” 


78 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“It is strange—it is—it must seem presumptu¬ 
ous,” faltered Ireton. “I would never have con¬ 
sented to come with such a message but—he is 
dying—he is friendless—nearly friendless. He 
cannot live another day and is so very anxious just 

to see you—for old times’ sake-” 

“How sad—how terribly sad! Poor man! 
I am so sorry. I don’t know what to say, but in 
such very sad circumstances I don’t see how I can 
refuse. It is—well, after all these years—it is 
most curious he should wish to see me. But—what 
shall I do? . . . Very well. Would you like me 
to come with you now? I suppose I ought to—I 
must. If you will wait a few minutes while I get 
ready—I shall not keep you long.” 

Left alone, Ireton sat mute and numbed, past 
analysing his sensations or feeling any more, until 
she returned to accompany him. 

All emotion was exhausted in him for the present, 
except one of thankfulness that she had not recog¬ 
nised him. She chatted amiably as they rode 
together in the taxi, and he answered her, but 
precisely what she said and what he replied he 
could never afterwards recall. 

Their arrival sent a little thrill of surprise rip¬ 
pling ahead of them all along the ward. The 



THE LAST CHAPTER 


79 


thin, sharp rustle of her silks summoned ghostly 
faces up from among white bedclothes to right and 
left, and glassy eyes stared at them as they passed. 
But no eyes stared so wonderingly as did those of 
No. 20; Ireton was conscious that the light faded 
from them suddenly, that their troubled glances 
wavered from himself to her, and he evaded them, 
for he could not bear to see in them any reflection 
of his own sufferings. 

He escorted her to the bedside, and said quietly: 

“This is Mr. Marston, Mrs. Ainsleigh.” 

She clasped the man’s lean hand effusively, and 
putting up her pince-nez graciously inspected him. 

“And is it really Mr. Marston? I declare I 
should not have known you! You are so entirely 
different—but then, of course, you have been ill, 
poor man, and illness does make such a difference. 
You must take care of yourself, and I hope you 
will soon be better. I hope you are well looked 
after?” She swept the ward with her glasses. 
“Beautifully clean and airy, is it not? And are 
you comfortable here? So glad. It is so very 
long since we met. You have had some great mis¬ 
fortune to bring you to this—but I must not ask 
you about that now; I can see you are not strong 
enough to talk. Such a long time—you will, no 


80 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


doubt, notice changes in me. Ah, dear!” she 
sighed. “I do not forget the old times, and I am 
sorry to find you so poorly.” 

Ireton strolled away beyond hearing. Her 
rapid tones and shallow vivacity irritated him, 
jarred upon him less because of their unlikeness 
to the looks and tones of the girl he had known 
than because, in some incongruous fashion, they 
actually were like them. Yearning to escape 
from sight and sound of her, he wandered up and 
down the gloomy corridor outside, peering in at 
the door from time to time, until he saw she was 
about to depart. Then, having accompanied her 
downstairs and handed her into the waiting taxi, 
he went back irresolutely, and sat down by Mar- 
ston’s bed. 

For several minutes neither of them spoke. 

Marston lay with his eyes closed, but Ireton was 
aware that he was not asleep, and by and by he 
glanced up and said, as if continuing a conversa¬ 
tion: 

“And you never told her who you were?” 

“There was no need.” 

Marston lay still, except for an occasional 
twitching of his lips. 

“Good God!” he ejaculated suddenly. “I 


THE LAST CHAPTER 


81 


made sure you must have made a mistake—it 
completely took my breath away at first!” He 
broke into low, irrepressible laughter. “Well, 
perhaps I’m the better off of the two of us after all, 
old chap. I’ve seen her and—I can do my dying 
comfortably now. She promised to come again— 
but I hope I shall have gone before she comes. I 
say—what damned fools we’ve been, Ireton.” 

The Chaplain made as if he would speak, but 
said nothing. 

“You’re sore about it. No wonder. I don’t 
care so much myself, somehow. But fancy!”— 
the shrunken, bony figure was convulsed with sil¬ 
ent laughter—“fancy you going to heaven and 
me to hell for such a woman as that! ” He laughed 
still in silence, till the tears ran down his cheeks. 
“I can’t help thinking,” he checked his merri¬ 
ment, and added with an unctuous chuckle, “I 
wonder which of us’ll meet her?” 


OF TWO EVILS 


i 

It was done, and he was a murderer. 

The thought spoke, as it were, in his mind—a 
low, awe-stricken whisper—and Nat Peplow heard 
it vaguely, as one reviving from a swoon hears 
voices speak beside him without grasping what 
they say. 

Stupefied, his brain strangely awhirl, he stood 
staring vacantly down at the motionless figure of 
the woman who, a moment before, had flung up 
her arms with a shrill cry and fallen silent. 

The slim, keen knife slipped from his nerveless 
fingers and rolled on the floor. Glancing aside 
at it, he noticed the red smear on the end of its 
blade, but did not stoop to pick it up again. He 
was dully wondering whether anyone had heard 
the frightened death-shriek that still rang in his 
ears; but there was no hurry of approaching foot¬ 
steps, no answering call of alarm; the whole house 
was very quiet. 


82 


OF TWO EVILS 


83 


It was done, and he was a murderer. 

He started, roused himself, and gasped, as if a 
douche of cold water had been splashed on his face. 
The thought in his mind had spoken louder and he 
heard it and understood its dreadful meaning, and 
shrank from the mute body, shuddering. He was 
afraid, but not repentant. 

This had been no act of momentary madness. 
He had contemplated the doing of it often during 
the last few weeks; he had planned it deliberately; 
in the secret darkness of his mind he had slain 
this woman several times before, glorying in the 
deed, revelling in the ecstasy of so easing his 
heart and getting free for ever of jealous fears 
and furies that had long tormented him day and 
night. 

It was done, and he was a murderer. 

Yet he had loved her passionately. It was for 
love not hate of her that he had burdened his soul 
with this crime. She had left him no alternative; 
no alternative that was possible to him; he must have 
lost her in this way or another, and he had put the 
dread of heaven and hell from him and chosen this. 

When he perpetrated the tragedy in imagination, 
however, there had always been two figures lying 
on the floor of the sordid little shop parlour; he had 


84 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


used the knife twice. But here, in practice he had 
used it once only, all his frenetic courage seeming 
to have spent itself in that one stroke. And, the 
crisis passing, he remained to face a conclusion he 
had not foreseen. 

Stepping mechanically to the door that opened 
on the passage of the house, he locked it, and, re¬ 
crossing the parlour, moved irresolutely out into 
the shop, stationed himself behind the counter 
there and, from sheer force of habit and not con¬ 
scious of what he was doing, commenced absently 
weighing up sugar into half-pound packages. 

The shop was a very general grocer’s, dowered 
with a spirit licence. It was small, and choked 
with a superabundant stock, stuffy with inhar¬ 
monious odours, and inefficiently lighted. 

Nat scooped the white crystals out of a bin with 
a little brass shovel, shaking them into the blue 
paper lying across the scale, or taking a few grains 
back from it, until the balance was struck to a 
nicety, deftly wrapping each package and tying it 
round with the automatic exactitude that comes 
of much experience. 

All the while he was thinking; but his thoughts 
streamed through his mind, one after the other, in 
such an impetuous jostle that they merely seemed 


OF TWO EVILS 


85 


to dazzle and confound him, so that every now and 
then he had to pull himself together to remember 
what he was thinking about. 

The advent of a customer steadied him: a 
snuffling old woman carrying a wicker basket. 
She made some reference to the weather, and he 
replied. She ordered butter, and he beat up a 
diminutive pat on the marble slab; an egg, two 
bundles of wood, and a rasher of bacon. He had 
lifted down the piece of bacon she selected and was 
peering around for the knife before he recollected 
with a start where it was. He hacked the rasher 
off with a small chopper, the old woman chattering 
incessantly and he replying. 

When she was gone he tried to recall what he had 
said to her, but comforted himself that he could 
not have said anything unusual, or she would not 
have departed so complacently. 

If he had chanced to utter anything of what was 
in his mind, and she had walked to the glass panel 
of the parlour door and peered in between the 
curtains!— His eye following his grim fancy, 
he glided lightly in the same direction, and peered 
in between the curtains himself. 

It lay there still, stark and immovable, as he had 
left it. 


86 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


The sight of it touched him with no pity, no 
remorse, no sorrow at all, for at least the one thing 
he had dreaded more than any other could never 
happen now. This that had happened was bad, 
but to have lost her in the other way would have 
been infinitely worse; and only to feel sure that the 
worst was past filled him with an ineffable restful¬ 
ness. He had for many months been a stranger to 
such perfect quietude of emotion as possessed him 
now. He marvelled dimly that he could be so 
callous, seeing how fiercely he had loved her; 
but the ache of the wound is not felt in the instant 
of its infliction—perhaps he might realise his loss 
to-morrow and then the grief of it would break his 
heart. 

Meanwhile he was losing time, and every 
moment of delay was fraught with danger; and the 
more selfish fear prevailed. He had meant to die, 
but he was living, and in a flash the prospect of 
death for himself revolted him. He reached a 
resolution spontaneously, but, even in the full tide 
of his bewildering apprehensions, a subtle instinct 
restrained him and he saw it would be folly to omit 
a precaution, that might be the means of giving 
him several hours’ start before discovery put the 
hounds of the law hot upon his scent. 


OF TWO EVILS 


87 


He carried out the wooden shutters and barred 
them in their places with feverish haste; he had 
given his errand-boy half a day’s holiday—he had 
done the same before but had each time postponed 
the event—and he employed no other assistant, so 
his course was unimpeded. He closed and bolted 
the shop door, flung off his apron, and put his hat 
and coat on and was turning the gas off when 
somebody without rattled at the door handle and 
sent his heart leaping and fluttering into his throat . 

Surely it was impossible that any suspicion 
could have got abroad already? 

“Fool!” he adjured himself, under his breath. 
“It’s not that—it’s—it’s nobody.” 

Nevertheless, he stood very still, fearful lest any 
movement should betray his presence, while the 
hand rattled again at the door, and until the reced¬ 
ing footsteps reassured him. 

A minute later, he passed out by the side door 
of the house into the cool air of the living street, 
with a curious consciousness upon him of the 
change he had undergone. A quarter of an hour 
ago he had been a blameless, commonplace trades¬ 
man; he was commonplace no longer, nor blameless. 
There was blood on his hands; he was a criminal 
outcast, fleeing for his life. 


88 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


ii 

No traveller that night in the railway carriage 
that conveyed Nat Peplow to Plymouth could 
have guessed from his appearance that he was a 
murderer, yet he shrank from every glance as if 
he knew the mark of Cain was visible upon his 
brow. 

He was a slightly built man, under middle height, 
still on the right side of fifty; and far from being 
formidable his appearance was even a little gro¬ 
tesque. His hair and complexion were dark; he 
wore a scraggy untrimmed moustache and tufts of 
side whiskers, but kept his chin clean-shaven. His 
beaked nose was too large for his narrow visage, 
and his mouth was scarcely more than a puckered 
hole in his face—a face whose prevailing expression 
was of extreme simplicity and nervous meekness. 

That Mrs. Peplow, who was less than half his age, 
had not married him for love might readily be 
believed; that such a man was not easily impelled 
to such a deed as he had done would go without 
saying. 

As a matter of fact, Nat knew from the first that 
Alice Simm did not love him, and that she married 
him two years ago partly because he was in com- 


OF TWO EVILS 


89 


paratively affluent circumstances, whilst she and 
her mother, lodging over his shop, were miserably 
poor; and partly because she had quarrelled with 
the man she had been engaged to—a flagrant 
instance of his perfidy having been brought to her 
knowledge by a sympathetic friend—and in the 
blind bitterness of her pique she was eager to do 
anything that would hurt him and seem to show 
that she was indifferent and, at the same time, 
flatter her outraged vanity with an appearance of 
revenge. Her mother, with a prospective eye to 
personal benefits, had championed Nat’s cause 
throughout, and, prompted by her, he dashed into 
the arena at the psychological moment, and 
snatched a victory. 

But- 

“I might ha’ known how it would end,” Nat 
groaned within himself on that tedious night 
journey. “Damn him—and her too! I wish I 
had never met her!” 

She had not grown to care for him, as he had 
hoped she would. She wearied of him; her passive 
disinclination hardened to dislike; her dislike into 
something approaching active detestation. From 
regretting the headlong course she had taken, Alice 
came to look back with an intolerable yearning 


90 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


upon the love she had spurned in the heat of her 
resentment. Certainly that other man had 
wronged her; yet she felt she had far better have 
forgiven and forgotten and been happy. 

The old lover returned, repentant and reproach¬ 
ful, and met her in this mood. 

They met at first by accident; afterwards, and 
frequently, by design. And her love for this 
man was as a heathenish, sacrificial fire, and all 
her sense of duty and honour burnt like fuel in the 
flame of it. 

For the greater part of three months such clan¬ 
destine meetings had been happening, and there 
had already been serious talk between the two of 
going away together and starting life afresh in a 
new country, before any mutterings of the storm 
that was gathering broke upon the fatuous ears 
of Nat Peplow. 

It was Mrs. Simm that warned him, still with a 
steadfast eye to her special interests, and, meek 
coward though he usually was, her warnings stung 
him into manhood, and he spoke sternly, resolutely 
to his wife of what he had heard. She paled and 
cast down her eyes, but did not condescend to utter 
a denial. 

Thenceforward, they had known no peace. He 


OF TWO EVILS 


91 


kept jealous watch on her goings out and comings 
in, but she was cunning in devising means to evade 
him. It came to pass that they never spoke to 
each other, save sullenly, or in angry bickerings, he 
assuming an attitude of accusation and injury, she 
of scornful defiance. 

Once, in one of those wrangles, she laughed at 
him, as she had often done, and the sting of her 
fleering laughter exasperated him almost to mad¬ 
ness. He stamped, and choked, and shook his 
puny fist excitedly. 

“Curse you!” he raved. “You may laugh— 
but don’t try me too far!” 

She laughed again, tickled by a something gro¬ 
tesque in the portentous earnestness of the plain- 
featured, oddly fashioned little man who menaced 
her so loudly. 

“I tell you—and I mean it,” he shouted hoarsely 
“sooner than you shall go with that blackguard— 
sooner than you shall go away with him—I—I’ll 
kill you—I’ll kill you—damn you, I’ll kill you!” 

The words took him by surprise and inspired 
him. Tossing about sleepless that night he took 
the knife, in his dreams, for the first time, and, in 
imagination, struck her to the heart with it exult¬ 
antly, and saw her lying at his feet as, at last and 


92 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


in very truth, he had seen her lying—was it only an 
hour since? He had lost all count of time. 

hi 

Nat fled no farther than Plymouth, for at least 
two reasons. His life had run so long in the one, 
narrow, homely groove that the near prospect of a 
sea voyage and a transplanting of himself to some 
distant, unknown land was only less appalling than 
death itself. Furthermore, in his haste, he had not 
thought to furnish himself with extra money and 
had come away with a trifle under six pounds in his 
pocket. 

For an eternal four days he dubitated at Ply¬ 
mouth, living in an obscure hotel, and venturing 
little into the streets before nightfall. He dared 
not take up a newspaper, knowing too well what he 
would read there. By day, when he was not at 
meals, he prowled moodily about the billiard table, 
eager to play with anybody who would join him; 
of nights he lay awake, or dozed by fits, raving 
through that last fatal quarrel and striking that 
savage blow with the knife again. Every step in 
the street, every step on the stairs was in pursuit 
of him, and he quaked and held his breath till it 


OF TWO EVILS 


93 


was past. A dozen times in those four nights he 
had leaped from his bed, and crouched, listening in 
the dark to imaginary whisperings in the empty 
passage without. 

On the fifth day he could sustain the awful strain 
no longer. He was completely broken down and 
despondently reckless, a hunted haggard object 
that went in terror of its own shadow. He 
regretted nothing, and no remorse fretted him; it 
was the constant monotony of suspense that was 
wasting him, body and soul. And he was seized 
with a sudden irresistible impulse to go back and 
end his misery; a great craving for rest cast all fear 
out of him. 

Darkness had fallen when he arrived in London 
again; and his own street, muddy from recent 
rains, and reflecting the light of lamps and shop 
windows in all its puddles, greeted him with 
homely friendly looks. His shop was still shut. 
He opened the side door quietly with his latch-key, 
and entered unmolested. 

The place wore a cold air of desolation. Other¬ 
wise both the shop and the parlour retained their 
well-remembered aspect. The body had been 
removed, and, on investigation, he ascertained that 
the till had been emptied and his cash-box was 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


gone from the cupboard. Doubtless the police 
had taken charge of these things, he reflected, when 
they took away the body. 

The dark stain on the hearthrug was not so 
large as he had been picturing it to himself; still, it 
was there, and had a strange fascination for him. 
It was the first thing to catch his eye as he went in, 
and the last as he came out. 

He came out with no undue delay, before his 
resolution could waver, and before he was dis¬ 
covered and had to endure the humiliation of 
arrest. A brisk five minutes’ walking brought 
him to the police station, and he mounted the steps 
unhesitatingly. 

“My name,” he said darkly to the officer in 
charge, “is Nathaniel Peplow.” 

The officer betrayed no excitement. 

“I wish to give myself up for the murder of my 
wife last Friday.” 

The officer’s interest was aroused. He opened a 
book, tested a pen on his thumb-nail, and called an 
attendant constable to come inside and shut the 
outer door. 

Nat spent that night in a police cell, but his 
mind was at ease and he slept soundly. 

In the morning he was taken before the magis- 


OF TWO EVILS 


95 


trate, and his confession was read out in court. 
Then followed a surprise. 

A policeman appeared in the witness box, and 
discoursed with the automatic glibness of his tribe. 

“I made enquiries at the prisoner’s house, yer 
worshup, and, from information received, his wife 
is still alive. He assaulted her with a knife on the 
date he mentions, an’ absconded, leaving her for 
dead. But he’d only inflicted a flesh wound on the 
left side.” 

“Where is the woman?” queried the magistrate. 
“Is she going to prosecute?” 

“She sailed for Australia yesterday, yer wor¬ 
shup.” 

“For Australia?” 

“Her mother, who lodges at the prisoner’s house, 
says there was trouble over another man, and the 
prisoner was mad with jealousy and tried to kill 
his wife. She took advantage of the prisoner’s 
absence an’ went off with that man yesterday.” 

“Have you proof of this?” 

“I have been to the steamship company’s office 
an’ seen their names in the passenger list.” 

“Is the mother in court?” 

“She is, yer worshup.” 

“Let her go into the box.” 


96 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


Mrs. Simm’s tearful corroborations were inter¬ 
rupted by a startling, heavy thud; the prisoner had 
collapsed in the dock. 

“The relief of learning he has not been guilty of 
this terrible crime has been too much for him,*’ 
suggested the magistrate. “I shall discharge 
you,” he announced, when Nat had been brought 
to. “You have still a great misfortune to bear, it 
is true, but it is not so great as you had 
anticipated.” 

That was the magistrate’s view. Nat, who saw 
the trouble more closely, felt that the doom he had 
escaped was far more desirable than the doom that 
had overtaken him. To think that, after all, he 
had bungled like a fool! If he had but stopped 
and seen that his aim had erred and struck again! 
But he had been a coward; the sight of blood had 
scared him, and he had taken a woman’s swoon for 
death. 

And so she was gone—gone with him—with the 
man for whose eternal damnation he would thank¬ 
fully have bartered his own soul. In a passion of 
delirium he had his hands at the blackguard’s 
throat and wrung the life out of him. 

How he found his way home he could not have 
told. He hardly knew he was there until it casu- 


OF TWO EVILS 


97 


ally occurred to him that he was pacing to and fro 
betwixt the shop and the parlour like a caged 
animal. He must have been there then for some 
hours, for morning and afternoon were past, and 
the twilight was darkening. Having lit the gas, he 
resumed his restless tramping up and down, now 
plunged deep in black musings, now seething into a 
frothy bubble of threats and curses and impotent 
denunciations. All he had striven to prevent had 
happened in spite of him. Oh, that he had died 
and never known—or could die and forget! 

He had eaten nothing all day, and was not 
hungry, but was parched with thirst. In a calmer, 
lucid interval his glance travelled round the dismal 
shop and lighted haphazard on a particular shelf. 
Why had he not caught at this notion sooner? 
There was more than one way of forgetting. He 
chuckled, and reaching down a bottle of brandy 
carried it into the parlour. 

Mrs. Simm had returned home hours before this, 
but, having overheard him from the passage, she 
deemed it prudent to retire to her own room and 
not intrude upon him until he had simmered down 
and was in a fit condition to be consoled and 
advised. 

She could hear him moving about, her room 


98 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


being immediately over the parlour, but he made 
no noise that disturbed her till just after she had 
gone to bed; then she was startled out of a doze by 
hearing him laugh—a grating, deliberate, mirth¬ 
less laugh that rose to a strident roar, and ceased 
abruptly. She sat up to listen, with icy little 
thrills tingling through her veins. 

The savage outburst was not repeated, however, 
so she quieted her nerves and lay down again. 

It might have been an hour later when she was 
aroused by a sound of hammering; and she was 
trying to brace herself to the task of going out and 
calling over the staircase to him, when to her 
intense relief the noise suddenly stopped. 

Then minutes afterward there was a sharp crash, 
as if he had petulantly kicked a chair over—then a 
deep stillness, and though she lay awake a weary 
while no other sound alarmed her that night. 

Next morning, not hearing him astir, she 
assumed he had gone to bed late, and went down¬ 
stairs thinking to propitiate him by getting his 
breakfast ready. 

She pushed open the parlour door, but some 
obstruction behind kept it from opening more than 
a few inches. Peering round with difficulty, she 
perceived it was the chair he had kicked over last 


OF TWO EVILS 


99 


night. Even then it did not occur to her that he 
could not have gone up to bed. She thrust in a 
little farther and leaned forward to push the chair 
aside, but before her hand touched it she tore her¬ 
self back with a piercing cry, and ran out shriek¬ 
ing into the street, clasping her hands over her 
eyes. 

But she had seen it, and could not shut out the 
sight of it; it was there behind the door—a grimly 
fantastic shape—a dark, horrible something that 
dangled against the wall at the end of a rope. 


A BLOOMING PLANT 

“Orl a-blowin’ and a-growin’!” 

Enry caught sight of a lady at a window, and 
stopped short in his melancholy chaunt. He 
stepped into her front garden with an armful of 
flowers in pots and one in his hand, and offered 
them all for inspection. 

“’Ere yer are, lidy,” he called huskily. “Lover- 
ley geranium—look at the colour!—Chiner arster, 
be-autiful lily o’ the valley. Orl a-blowin’ and 
a-growin’, lidy.” 

The lady shook her head. 

“Any price yer like, lidy.” Enry pleaded. 
“Loverley toolip. You’ll never ’ave a chance to 
buy a better one. ’Ere yer are, lidy, gimme a old 
pair of boots for it!” 

She shook her head again, but as Enry persevered 
she obviously weakened, and presently withdrew 
from the window and, after an interval of un¬ 
certainty, appeared at the door. Enry was half¬ 
way up the steps in a moment and, with a deft 
100 


A BLOOMING PLANT 


101 


sweep of his arms, ranged his flower-pots on the top 
one. 

“Take yer choice, lidy,” he entreated her. 
“Can’t do no business at all to-day. ’Ave one for 
luck, lidy, an’ gimme what yer like for it.” 

“Are you the man who sold me a Christmas 
Rose two years ago?” she asked sharply. 

She was a young lady, not experienced enough to 
dissemble. 

“No, lidy. Not me, lidy. I wouldn’t do such 
a thing,” Enry assured her, taking warning from 
her tone and manner. “Fust time I ever bin in 
this neighbourhood.” 

“Oh, I thought you looked rather like him,” she 
said apologetically. 

“If I do, lidy, I can’t ’elp it. My usual luck,” 
Enry protested. “I don’t do it a-purpose.” 

“Oh, it’s my mistake,” she admitted graciously. 
“He told me it was a Christmas Rose and would 
bloom beautifully, but I have had it two Christ¬ 
mases and there has never been a bud on it 
yet.” 

“Ah, I wasn’t him. That’s the sort o’ greaser,” 
Enry sighed and looked depressed, “what spoils 
the trade for honest men. Sorry you think I look 
like ’im, lidy-” 


102 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“I thought so just at first,” she interrupted un¬ 
comfortably. “I was only wondering—it doesn’t 
matter. My mistake.” 

“Thank you, lidy.” Enry was grateful. “I’m 
not that sort. I never sell no plant I can’t guaran¬ 
tee, and, if it don’t give complete satisfaction, you 
can ’ave yer money back, or I’ll change it for 
another. I can’t say no fairer than that, can I, 
lidy? If you was wantin’ any toolips, amenomies, 
crisanthelums-” 

“No, thank you, I really have no room for any 
more,” she declared. “A friend of mine has a 
really beautiful Christmas Rose, and I thought I 
would like one, too—a real blooming plant. Now 
if you had one that you could recommend—But 
there is nothing else I want just at present.” 

“Well, lidy, to tell the truth, I ’ave got a Christ¬ 
mas Rose—an uncommon beauty.” Enry hesi¬ 
tated. “But, the fact is, I was takin’ it to a lidy 
who specially arst me to get one for ’er. Still—I 
didn’t say I’d take it to-day; she won’t be expectin’ 
it so soon; and, if you wanted it p’tickler, why, I 
daresay I could get ’er another an’ take it next time 
I come round.” 

“It is a genuine blooming plant?” 

“Oh, lidy, I wouldn’t say so if it wasn’t. It’s 


A BLOOMING PLANT 


103 


the best bloomin’ plant you could expect to get 
anywhere.” 

Enry was emphatic about it. He ran lightly out 
to his barrow while he was speaking, and called in 
a brisk, businesslike style to his waiting, moody 
assistant: 

“Where’s that Christmas Rose I was a-keepin’ 
for that lidy, Walter? Ah, here it is—here we are! ” 

He snatched up a small indefinite-looking plant 
half lost in a large pot and ran back with it. 

“Now, look at that! That’s what you want, 
lidy. A beauty!” he cried, eyeing it admiringly. 
“There’s something like a Christmas Rose for yer. 
One I can guarantee meself, lidy.” 

“Isn’t it rather small?” she inspected it dubi¬ 
ously. “It is not like the other one I have.” 

“Well, you don’t want another one like that, 
lidy. You wouldn’t never ’ave no bloom on it if it 
was,” he said conclusively. “ This is a real Christ¬ 
mas Rose. I dunno what you’ve got, lidy, but this 
is a real young one, a cuttin’ from a prize Christ¬ 
mas Rose that’s flowered every year for six years 
and is still a-blowin’ and a-growin’ as ’arty as ever. 
Look at it. Take it in yer own ’ands. You know 
somethin’ about flowers, I can see that, and you 
only got to cast yer eye on that to see what it is. 


104 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


Please yerself, lidy. If it ain’t quite what you 
want, I can take it on to the lidy I was bringin’ it 
for an’ no ’arm done and everybody satisfied.” 

“How much do you want for it?” 

“Well, they run into money, the real bloomers 
do.” He regarded it critically. “Say two shillin’s 
an’ a pair of old boots, lidy, an’ one of the gent’s 
old coats, an’ it’s a bargain.” 

She hesitated; then went in, and returned, after 
a few minutes, with a pair of exhausted boots and 
a seedy pair of trousers. 

“I couldn’t get nothin’ for these, lidy—they’re 
a bit far gorn.” Enry examined them with un¬ 
disguised disappointment. “I should lose on ’em. 
Throw me in another pair o’ trousers and a old hat, 
or else I’ll chance it an’ take these an’ ’arf a crown 
an’ call it a deal.” 

She demurred, but Enry laid stress on the cir¬ 
cumstance that it was a guaranteed Christmas 
Rose and if she missed the opportunity she would 
be sorry for it, so she ultimately offered to let him 
have the barren plant she had purchased two years 
ago, to see if he could do anything with it, and to 
add a pair of second-hand shoes of her own, and 
with these and the other articles and two shillings 
Enry reluctantly undertook to be contented. 


A BLOOMING PLANT 


105 


“You see the leaves on this one of mine, ,, she 
remarked, as she passed the spurious Rose out to 
him, “ are quite different from the leaves on yours.” 

“Course they are, lidy,” Enry spoke with a 
touch of scorn, “you only got to look at this old 
one of yours to see it ain’t no Christmas Rose. It 
don’t look no good to me. You got the best o’ this 
bargain, lidy, no error! Still, if it starts my luck 
I shan’t grumble. Plenty o’ water is what Christ¬ 
mas Roses want, lidy, don’t forgit that, and keep 
it in a cool place, an’ thank you kindly, and good 
day, lidy.” 

“That wasn’t no Christmas Rose you sold ’er, 
Enry,” observed the moody Walter, when they 
were round the corner with the barrow and near 
enough to each other for easy conversation. 
“That was that bit o’ privet you stuck in without 
no root.” 

“It’s my idea of a Christmas Rose, Walter,” 
said Enry, with some severity, “and, if I like to call 
it that, why shouldn’t I? Come on! Throw it 
orf yer chest—Orl a-blowin’ and a-growin’! ” 

And the wheezy voice of Walter blended with 
his in the chorus. 

Turning another corner they came in sight of a 
railway station. Several passengers were coming 


106 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


out, evidently city men on the way home, and, 
following his usual custom, Enry devoted marked 
attention to the more affluent and likely looking 
among them as they passed. 

“’Ere you are, guvner.” He addressed himself 
persuasively to a genteel young clerk of guileless 
aspect, and turned and walked beside him. “ ’Ave 
a nice geranium, or a stirshun to take ’ome to the 
missis. Orl a-blowin’ and a-growin’! ’Ave a nice 
dailier, sir. Or can I do yer a sweet bigonier, or a 

Christmas Rose, or-” 

“A Christmas Rose?” The young gentleman 
pulled up. “Have you got a Christmas Rose? 
Will it bloom? Are you sure?” 

He questioned Enry closely and seemed greatly 
tempted. The truth was, he had been lingering in 
town with a friend and was nearly two hours late, 
and caught at the thought of carrying a peace¬ 
offering home with him. 

“My wife bought one of a man two years ago,” 
he explained frankly, “and it has been a great 
disappointment to her. It has never bloomed. 
Now if you are quite certain this is a good one and 

will flower next Christmas-” 

Enry was hurt that there should be any doubt 
of that. He had cultivated it himself, he said; 


A BLOOMING PLANT 


107 


it had grown up under his own eye; he knew its 
pedigree and was prepared to pledge his solemn 
oath that by the time Christmas came it would be 
simply a mass of bloom; he urged the young man to 
feel the leaves and smell it and see for himself, and 
though there might not be much smell now there 
would be more later on—not much, because it isn’t 
to be expected from this sort of plant—but he could 
judge for his own self. Whilst he was talking he 
had lured the young man along to the barrow, then, 
standing his armful of pots on the pavement, he 
snatched up the Christmas Bose the lady had 
given him in exchange and submitted it for 
admiration. 

“Be-autiful plant, sir,” he exclaimed ecstatically, 
“I was takin’ it to a party what arst me to get ’er 
one, but I’m always open to do business, and I’ll 
try to get ’er another. If you want a Christmas 
Bose, a champion bloomer, now’s yer chance, 
guvner, and ’ere it is.” 

“Very like the one we’ve got at home,” the 
young man admitted. “ The right kind—I can see 
that—but will it ” 

“Of course it will,” Enry struck in. “Same 
breed, as you say, sir. All Christmas Boses has 
that kind of leaves. Bound to. But the good ones 


108 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


bloom, and the inferior ones don’t. Now, this is a 
good one.” 

The young gentleman debated inwardly with 
himself and outwardly with Enry; considered five 
shillings too much, but finally paid three-and-six 
and went on his way bearing the Christmas Rose 
carefully in his arms. 

“Git a move on yer,” said Enry, stepping 
smartly beside the barrow. “When she sees it 
she’ll send him back to look for us.” 

“She said she wanted a bloomin’ plant,” Walter 
panted with the haste he was making and chuck¬ 
ling ghoulishly, “and she’s got it.” 

“She’s got it, Walter,” Enry corrected him, “all 
except the bloom!” 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 


i 

In the beginning, everybody who knew them was 
surprised that Gus Parry should condescend to be 
fascinated by Bella Ward; in the end, everybody 
was surprised that Bella should be more or less 
contented with Gus Parry. 

It began when Gus, strolling down Somerset 
Street eating fried fish out of a scrap of newspaper, 
saw Bella sewing at her mother’s door. 

They were neighbours, and knew each other by 
sight, but moved in different circles: Bella was 
incurably homely, and Gus something of a dis¬ 
tinguished figure in local society. 

“Hallo!” he ejaculated, delaying to look at her; 
and it struck him then, for the first time, that she 
was a bit of a daisy—not smart, perhaps, but 
pretty enough in a shy and simple way. 

She glanced up and blushed and nodded with a 
timid smile. 


109 


110 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“’Ave some?” he urged, coming a step nearer 
and proffering the contents of the newspaper. 

She shook her head, blushed again, sensible of 
the compliment, but declined. 

“Where yer goin’ to-night?” he enquired. 
“I’m goin’ to the Cinema. Come wiv us?” 

“I dunno.” Bella affected indifference, as if 
the Cinema had no attractions for her, but she 
was flattered, and a little afraid her apparent 
lack of enthusiasm might wound his susceptibili¬ 
ties, so added quickly, “Might manage it—if yer 
like.” 

His attentions did not stop there, and before 
long Haggerston was talking about them, and 
wondering. 

For they had almost nothing in common; some 
sober, plodding artisan might have seen in her an 
ideal housemate and loyal mother of children; but 
Gus was a man about town, within his limits, a sort 
of Don Juan with the gilt off, and what he could 
see in her nobody could imagine. 

He was handsome, in a crude fashion, with 
roving eyes and a loose mouth and, after working- 
hours especially, showed an elegant, though loud, 
taste in the cut and pattern of his garments; while 
Bella’s prettiness was of the very quietest type; 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 111 


she was awkwardly bashful; her hat and dress were 
unsensational and tame even of a Sunday. She 
had never walked out with anyone before, and Gus 
had a vivid reputation for gallantry, and was 
credited with the breaking of many hearts. He 
usually had money to spend, for he supplemented 
his modest salary as bottler at a mineral water 
factory by a talent for backing winners and a lucky 
hand at Put-and-Take, and other speculations 
among outside brokers; but it was as much as 
Bella and her mother could do to live from hand to 
mouth by everlastingly drudging at tailoring work 
in their one stuffy ground-floor room in the poorer 
section of Somerset Street. 

Somerset Street was a narrow cut between high 
houses that were old and squalid. A barren pav¬ 
ing stretched up its dreary quarter of a mile, and it 
was shut off from the main road, at its Haggerston 
end, by a massive wrought-iron gateway which 
was rusted with age and broken and had lost one of 
its gates. This gate-way gave a forlornly aristo¬ 
cratic touch to it which the street itself did not live 
up to, since, as there was no road through for 
vehicles, it was not only converted into a safe 
playground for children, but, above a certain 
height, was thickly intersected by clothes-lines 


112 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


from some or other of which drying clothes 
fluttered daily. 

The better society of the street was to be found 
at the gate end, where Gus Parry resided with his 
people. Bella and her mother lodged at the 
other end, where there were more tenants to 
the square inch and, consequently, more clothes 
lines. 

When the general astonishment at Gus’s latest 
vagary had subsided, people laughed and told one 
another it was only a passing fancy and they hoped 
the girl might have the sense to know he was 
merely amusing himself and come to no harm be¬ 
fore it was over. That he would tire of Bella even 
sooner than he had tired of more dashing charmers 
was a foregone conclusion. 

But the strange thing was that, keeping a level 
head and prudently restraining his rebellious ard¬ 
ours within seemly bounds, Bella seemed to take a 
real hold upon his unstable heart, and by degrees, 
without seeming to be even aware of it, obtained a 
quite remarkable ascendancy over him. Whether 
it was her complete unlikeness to other girls of his 
acquaintance, her novel simplicity, her unsophisti¬ 
cated reticence and gentleness that drew and sub¬ 
dued him, it was a fact that evening after evening 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 113 


he sauntered to her door and leaned there chatting 
with her as she sat sewing, for the sake of the 
fresher air, just inside the passage of the house; 
or if it had grown too dark and she had gone in, 
he would put his head into their front room, with 
any transparent excuse, and start a casual conver¬ 
sation with her and her mother. 

He walked out with Bella from time to time; 
that was undeniable. A rumour even obtained 
that he had been seen in an early twilight 
accompanying her to the shop that employed her 
and her mother and had carried her bulky parcel of 
work part of the way for her; but nobody alto¬ 
gether credited the latter assertion until he was 
positively known to have done something as 
extraordinary, and more significant, one Saturday 
in May. And after that everybody was prepared 
to believe anything. 

On that Saturday afternoon he took Bella to a 
second-hand shop in the Kingsland Road and there 
purchased a frying-pan nearly as good as new and 
a stuffed owl under a glass shade and left these 
articles for storage at Bella’s lodging. Her mother 
confessed all she knew to a neighbour who had 
witnessed their arrival with the goods, and the 
bearings of the event were sufficiently obvious. It 


114 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


was their first step towards acquiring a home of 
their own. 

Bella was happy in those days, and happiness 
brought a new light into her eyes, a new alertness 
into her manner; it touched her pale, pleasant 
features with the beauty that clothes ordinary 
things when the sun shines on them. People 
thought she was lucky; she thought so herself; she 
was envied; she was hated, and so made to feel that 
she was privileged among her kind. 

Nevertheless, there were pessimists who wagged 
their heads and said darkly: 

“Nothin’ in it. You wait! He’ll chuck ’er 
presently when ’e’s had enough of her. You 
see.” 

And after certain weeks those who waited saw 
Gus in amorous attendance upon Alice Bates, the 
breezy, garish belle of Appleby’s Row, hard by. 

Bella may have seen nothing of this, but she was 
duly informed of it, and forfeited the sympathy 
that would otherwise have been bestowed upon her 
by the coldness with which she received such tid¬ 
ings and the brevity of her responses. Whatever 
she may have suffered, she never talked of it, and if 
Gus thought to rouse her jealousy and force her to 
pay him the compliment of going after him he was 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 115 


disappointed. She toiled hard at her tailoring, 
trudging through the streets every other day with 
her big parcel of work, as usual, but her face grew 
thinner, her eyes lost their light, and the bloom 
faded from her cheeks. 

So the days passed, and still Gus remained aloof, 
and still she neither wrote to him nor made 
attempts to waylay him covertly, as others he 
jilted had used to; on the contrary, an instinctive 
pride or sense of personal dignity led her to keep 
out of his way, and it is probable that this un¬ 
wonted treatment rankled in Gus and piqued and 
irritated him. 

Anyhow, it came about that one evening as she 
sat sewing in the door-way a shadow fell across her, 
and she knew without looking up that he was there 
again. 

“Cheer-o, Bella!” said he. “Cornin’ out?” 

His manner was shamefaced and discomforted. 

If she was embarrassed she did not show it, but 
shook her head and would not trust herself to 
speak. 

“Why not?” 

But she went on sewing in silence. 

“All right, yer needn’t make yerself so narsty 
with a bloke,” he protested. “I was only larkin’. 


116 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


No ’arm done, is there? Look ’ere. ’Ows’ 
that?” 

He tossed a silver bangle into her lap. 

She did not take it up at once, but the hardness 
of her heart began to melt; she was conscious of 
relenting impulses; he was penitent, and it was not 
in her to be inexorable. He went on mumbling 
intermittent apologies, till it troubled her to see 
such a man so abased, and when for a second time 
he pleaded: 

“Bella! Cawn’t yer drop stitchin’ that beastly 
stuff an’ come an’ do a walk rhand?”—she was 
impelled, after a momentary hesitation, to smile a 
forgiving “Yes,” and, slipping the bangle over her 
wrist, went in for her hat. 

That same evening, by way of clinching their 
reconciliation, he bought a cream-jug with a pic¬ 
ture on it and a set of pie dishes and entrusted 
these objects to Bella for storage with the frying- 
pan and the stuffed owl, thus demonstrating the 
seriousness of his intentions and putting the seal on 
their engagement. 

Thereafter, the jaded look passed from Bella’s 
face, and she could sing over her sewing again and 
happily invest Gus with more ideal virtues than he 
had ever aspired to possess. There were flaws in 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 117 


his character; she could not but recognise that. 
The police had recognised it once or twice, but this 
did not seriously injure his social standing in 
Somerset Street, and his predilection for backing 
winners, seeing that they frequently were winners, 
was even accounted to him for righteousness. His 
fickleness was his gravest fault in Bella’s eyes, and 
for that there were excuses: he was more run after 
and therefore had to resist more feminine temp¬ 
tations than most men, and in her humility she felt 
that she was herself lacking in the dash and brill¬ 
iance and allurement he had a right to expect in 
anyone who hoped to monopolise him. She must 
make allowance for his deficiencies, especially in 
view of her own, and was buoyed by a secret con¬ 
fidence that marriage would steady him, reclaim 
him, and put an end to his wandering inclinations. 

Nevertheless, it came upon her with a shock of 
surprise when, after a month or so of revived faith¬ 
fulness, he relapsed again and was rumoured to be 
the improper slave of another beauty in another 
street, and gave Bella the go-by as before. 

As before, she veiled from the public eye what¬ 
ever she may have suffered, and shrank from seem¬ 
ing to pursue him. But though she could not dust 
the stuffed owl and those other household articles. 


118 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


or so much as glance from her work at the shelf on 
which they were enshrined, without a pang, she 
could not bring herself to return them to him and 
thus, as it were, renounce him and close their 
romance definitely once for all. 

The dreary weeks dragged by, then one evening 
as she passed into the street, coming back from the 
city with her burdensome parcel of tailoring, she 
saw him lounging with boon companions at the 
corner. She trembled, and her face blanched, but 
she hurried on. Just as she passed, one of his 
cronies laughed and called to her in ribald mockery. 
The words stung her like a lash, but they were 
scarcely uttered when a curious sound of scuffling 
arose, a muffled roar of rage went up, and turning 
quickly she saw the man who had laughed sprawl¬ 
ing on the pavement and Gus rampant above 
him. 

She cried that night in bed, yet it was more from 
pleasure than sorrow. And when Gus lounged up 
the following evening she received him without 
agitation. Somehow, she had expected him. 

“I give ’Arry Simpson what for larst night,” he 
remarked carelessly. “ ’E won’t try to be so clever 
agen in a ’urry, I bet!” 

She did not reply immediately; but, the 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 119 


remembrance of his gallantry leaving her no alter¬ 
native, she said: 

“Yes, I saw you.” 

“’E’s got too much sauce, ’Arry has. Wants a 
little of it taken out of him, and I done it for him a 
treat. We had a fair scrap arter you’d gone, and 
Joe and Phil Morris had to take him ’ome when 
I’d finished because he couldn’t see ’is way.” He 
bragged in this strain for a minute, then switched 
off suddenly: “I say, chuck this job, can’t yer? 
What’s the matter with a toddle rhand?” 

Bella reflected. 

“Rippin’ piece on at the Standard—‘Worst 
Woman in London’—let’s go there. Eh?” 

That night they witnessed the play together 
from the front of the gallery, going in by the early 
door; and Somerset Street marvelled more than 
ever, and did not know what to make of it. Either 
Gus was a bit of a fool or Bella was uncommonly 
artful, they argued; anyhow, it was clear she had 
acquired such influence over him that, though he 
might desert her on an impulse, he could not shake 
himself free and was, sooner or later, drawn back to 
her as by some inexplicable law of nature. 

He did, indeed, fall from grace yet again within 
a month, and this time went near to losing her 


no 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


altogether. He developed a sudden infatuation 
for the young lady who happened to be pledged to 
his own particular chum, ’Erb Mowler, a morose 
young man who, before he arrived at years of 
greater discretion, had enjoyed distinction as a 
swaggering hooligan, a bandit who snatched cop¬ 
pers from terrified children going on errands, had 
attempted garrotting in a small way, and once shot 
a policeman through the helmet but had been 
acquitted for want of evidence, because the 
revolver could not be traced to him. 

Not a man to be lightly trifled with; nor one, 
perhaps, to be much pitied if the role of the injured 
innocent was imposed upon him, but when he came, 
smarting under a sense of his wrongs, and glowered 
in at Bella from the doorway, her ready sympathy 
went out to him, as to a fellow victim. 

“’Ere/’ he rumbled; “I s’pose you know abart 
it?” 

Bella admitted sadly that she did. 

“Yus. Well,” he continued, “’e bleedin’ well 
ain’t goin’ to fool me. Nor she ain’t neether, 
blast ’er!” 

Bella glanced at him enquiringly. 

“Reckon you won’t be sorry to git yer own back 
on him, eh?” said ’Erb. “Well, you leave it to 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 121 


me. I’ll give ’im more than enough for both of us, 
I know where to drop on ’em both to-night, and 
I’m goin’ to let him ’ave a taste of this. There’ll 
be plenty left over for ’er as well-” 

Bella interrupted. Without warning, she sprang 
on him desperately and clutched his hand. 

“Give it to me!” she panted, striving to wrest 
the weapon from him. “Come on, d’you hear? 
Give it to me!” 

“Don’t you be so damn silly,” he returned, 
easily resisting her “You leave go. Cheese it! 
You’ll ’ave it go off and kill yerself if you ain’t 
careful. Le’ go, I tell yer!” 

In the struggle he had clasped her hand, and was 
aware that it was a very small hand and of a pleas¬ 
ant neatness, for all its work-hardened fingers. 
He was a little fluttered by her flushed face being 
so near him, and realised that it was pretty in a 
quiet kind of way and had more charm than he had 
noticed in it hitherto. 

“Give it to me,” she insisted. “You shall not 
go till you do.” 

“Now, stow it. Don’t let’s have no bloomin’ 
accidents,” he pleaded. “It’s loaded. Le’ go, 
and I promise I won’t do it. Take my oath I 
won’t—not to-night.” 


122 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“You promise? You swear you won’t?” 

“Swear to Gord I won’t. There you are! 
Honest!” 

She doubtfully released her hold, and he slipped 
the revolver back into his pocket; but he did 
not let her hand go. She had to jerk it away 
from him. 

He made no attempt to recover it, but lingered, 
chatting moodily, and she encouraged him to stay, 
for as long as she had him under her eye she knew 
he could be doing no mischief. 

“I wouldn’t take ’er on agen now—not if she was 
to go down on ’er knees to me,” he said at parting. 
“And I guess you wouldn’t ’ave 9 im now, not at 
any price, would yer?” 

Bella evaded answering. She had said very 
little all the while; but when he moved to go she 
roused herself to remind him of his promise. 

“That’s all right,” he returned. “I won’t do 
nothing to-night. I dunno abart to-morrow. But 
I’ll come rhand and see you afore I make up my 
mind—I promise you that much; so you needn’t 
worry yer self. So long!” 

He called three evenings in succession, and as his 
yearning for vengeance dwindled his bearing 
towards Bella became more tender, more intimate. 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 123 


more insinuating. But, when he offered to treat 
her to a seat in the pit at the Pav., she professed to 
be too busy to think of such diversions. 

This irritated him. 

“Oh! It’s no good then, ain’t it?” She knew 
what he meant, but made no sign. “I’m as good 
as ’im, ain’t I? ... I s’pose you’d take that 
ruddy bounder on agen, as before, if ’e was to come 
back, would yer? Well,” as she maintained a dis¬ 
creet silence, “we’ll see! Let me find him haugiu’ 
around here agen, that’s all! I ain’t made no 
promise abart that, and ’e isn’t goin’ to have it all 
’is own way, not if I know it! ’Ave some sense. 
Come on! I can give yer a good time, and I shan’t 
serve yer like he did.” 

But she was not to be persuaded, and he went off 
at last, simmering with vexation. 

Now his visits to Bella had been so marked as 
to give rise to considerable gossip, rumours of 
which must have reached Gus in his wary comings 
and goings, for he presented himself to Bella unex¬ 
pectedly, and sulkily and sneeringly taunted her 
with having chucked him for such a contemptible 
outsider as ’Erb Mowler. 

“Don’t know what you mean,” she said shortly. 

“Oh, yus you do,” he cried. “If I ain’t good 


124 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


enough and you want to hook on to him, say 
so.” 

“Where have you been all this time?” she 
enquired. 

“Me? I’ve bin too busy on a special job,” he 
declared, “but I’ve heard about you and ’im, and 
I want to know if it’s true, that’s all.” 

She gazed at him reproachfully. 

“If it’s all lies, say so,” he urged; and added, 
magnanimously, “I don’t believe all I hear. Put 
yer hat on and come out and let’s talk about it.” 

But she was not prepared to surrender all at 
once. 

“Not to-night,” she said. “I haven’t time.” 

“Right O! Please yerself. Don’t matter to 
me,” he bridled resentfully. “I’m off. . . . Oh, 
then, what abart them things I bought for us?” 

A feeling of despair almost swept away her self- 
possession, for she knew that this meant the end; 
but she knew also that it would be unwise to relent 
too readily. 

“I’ll send ’em back to you to-morrow,” she 
retorted, choking with emotion, “if you like.” 

“Well, you’d better, then,” said he, “and I 
dessay I can find somebody else who’ll be glad to 
have ’em.” 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 125 


With that, he swung off in a huff, and Bella 
retired indoors and wept over the owl and his other 
gifts and wrapped them up carefully and contem¬ 
plated returning them, but was not destined to do 
so. 

There had been a furtive, fevered witness of 
their interview that evening. He watched from a 
distance and doggedly shadowed Gus out into the 
Kingsland Road, when he departed. 

Before morning Somerset Street had learned 
that ’Erb Mowler was lying in a police cell, and 
Gus, with an ugly bullet wound in his face, in 
hospital; where Bella was among the earliest of his 
visitors. Most of his countenance was hidden in 
bandages, and at the sight of her by his bedside he 
began to whimper. 

“Nice thing you’ve bin an’ done for me now!” 
he said. “If you hadn’t taken up with ’im, the 
blighter! this wouldn’t ’ave happened. Marked 
for life I am, and all your doings.” 

“ Don’t, Gus,” she said soothingly. “ You know 
I didn’t-” 

“Oh, no!” he interrupted. “It was all me. 
That’s right. Lay it to me!” 

“I wasn’t blaming you, Gus.” 

“ I should think not! You know jolly well-” 


126 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


But the nurse interposed She could not allow 
the patient to be excited, and Bella tearfully 
withdrew. 

She could not find courage to visit the hospital 
again. News filtered to her, from time to time, 
that he was progressing favourably, and at length 
she heard he was better, and that he was coming 
out. 

He had not been home many hours before he 
made his way to Bella’s door, and found her sewing 
industriously in her accustomed place. 

“Gus!” she ejaculated, in a flutter. “Are you 
—are you better?” 

“Middlin’,” he growled. The left side of his 
face was streaked with a wide strip of plaster, and 
he was subdued and sullen and unhappy. “I shall 
never be fit to be seen no more, though.” 

“Oh, Gus—I’m so sorry!” 

And her eyes filled with tears. 

“Fat lot o’ good that’s goin’ to do me!” he 
laughed mirthlessly. “But it’s done, and there it 
is. I don’t want to have no more row abart it. 
You—you ain’t sent them things back? . . . 
Well, you needn’t, if you don’t want to.” 

His magnanimity completely broke her down. 
She suspected she had been wrong in entertaining 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 127 


any pity for ’Erb Mowler and that her involuntary 
association with him had, after all, been a sort of 
disloyalty to Gus. 

64 As for yer precious ’Erb,” Gus added bitterly, 
“he’s got twelve months and ought to have had 
twelve years, and he’d better keep out o’ my road 
when they lets him loose, that’s all!” He paused 
to give her an opportunity of speaking, and, as she 
did not take it, concluded, 44 He’ll deserve all he 
gits.” 

44 Yes,” she agreed humbly. 

44 1 reckon! Well, it’s no use ’avin’ no more jaw 
about ’im. It’s done now, an’ we may as well let 
it be done with.” He regarded her thoughtfully. 
44 I’m right enough now, an’ shall be goin’ back to 
work next week.” His manner softened; he was 
assuming a mollified tone. 44 But I’m sick of all 
this foolin’ around. Time I got settled down. 
I ain’t got enough for no weddin’—not for two or 
three weeks. But we may as well go an’ put the 
banns up at the Register, if you like, while I’ve got 
time. I’m game if you are—eh? Cornin’?” 

II 

Although Gus Parry dressed startlingly well of 
Sundays and was something of a leader of fashion 


ns 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


in those Haggerston circles he favoured with his 
acquaintance, he was not a man of substance; as 
a matter of fact, when he married Bella his savings 
were so inconsiderable that the wedding expenses 
entirely absorbed them. 

This, however, was a negligible detail, as, with 
admirable forethought, he had arranged that he 
and his wife should reside with his mother-in-law 
in the full use and enjoyment of her furniture 
until they were enabled to acquire a little of their 
own. 

So far from demurring to this prudent scheme 
Mrs. Ward was disposed to encourage it, for several 
reasons. 

She and Bella had been earning a joint livelihood 
by hard work for some time past, and she shrank 
from the prospect of losing Bella’s assistance and 
companionship and being left to maintain herself 
in solitude. 

Moreover, though Gus’s people lived like herself 
in Somerset Street, they lived, as I have intimated, 
at the better end of it. Gus naturally prided 
himself on this, no less than on his local reputation 
for gallantry, and on his enterprise in systemati¬ 
cally “putting a bit on” in racing seasons and 
intermittently “pulling something off”; and Mrs. 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 129 


Ward fully recognised these distinctions. She was 
as conscious as he was that he stooped a little in 
marrying Bella, and it gratified her, no doubt to 
reflect that henceforth she might hope to bask in 
the gracious light that shines upon the humble 
connections of persons who are not so humble. 

And at the back of these considerations was an¬ 
other and more practical hope. Mrs. Ward had a 
dim fancy that in accommodating Gus and his 
bride she was, in a manner, making provision 
against her old age. If Gus found himself suffi¬ 
ciently comfortable and she could secure his 
confidence and regard, he would probably be 
contented to let these preliminary arrangements 
settle into permanency, and when she was past 
work he would not grudge her a seat at his table 
and a corner by the fireside she had cheerfully 
shared with him at first. 

Consoled with these visions, she made no 
grievance of her partial banishment from the 
ground floor bed-sitting-room to a dark back 
bedroom retained for her accommodation by 
night and rather bleakly furnished with one chair, 
a makeshift bed on the floor, and a draped packing 
case that served as a dressing-table. Really, she 
felt, this was no hardship if it helped her toward 


ISO 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


the end she had in view, for she still had un¬ 
restricted use of the front room during the day, 
when she and Bella sat and sewed there as usual 
while Gus was away at his work. 

For two or three weeks, perhaps a little longer, 
these amicable domestic adjustments worked 
smoothly enough; then Gus began to chafe 
under them. He grew tired of coming home every 
evening from his bottling achievements at the 
mineral-water factory to take tea tamely with his 
wife and mother-in-law; he grew also slightly 
ashamed of it. 

His own family observed with compassionate 
surprise the change that had come over him; from 
the first they had scornfully opposed his marriage, 
and would not be persuaded that Bella and her 
mother had not cunningly entrapped him; they 
had, in consequence, declined to visit or be visited 
by his wife and were fiercely jealous of her influence 
over him. Their contemptuous compassion exas¬ 
perated and humiliated Gus; and he was still more 
humiliated by the open ridicule of that particular 
set of friends who had aforetime looked up to him 
as to a master spirit. 

“What ho, Gus! Where yer bin? Never see 
nothin’ of you now at the ‘Swan,’” one of them 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 131 


would shout, as he passed a group lounging at the 
corner, when he was on his way home. “What’s 
up?” 

“Missis keeps him indoors,” explained another, 
“to turn the mangle.” 

“Is she goin’ to make yer darn the stockin’s 
to-night, Gus?” 

“No; he’s got the washin’ to do. Want any 
body to come an’ hang ’em out for yer, Gus?” 

Their fleering laughter followed him. He 
shouted and laughed back with an unsuccessful 
affectation of indifference, but a dull resentment 
burned in him, and he was hot with shame. 

His resentment was not against them, but 
against Bella. 

She was certainly pretty in a quiet, indefinable 
way, and had a frank, winning childlike manner 
that appealed to him in his bachelor days, but he 
was beginning to wonder, now that he was become 
more familiar with her charm, how it was he had 
ever allowed himself to be so bewitched and sub¬ 
dued by it as to go the length of fettering himself 
to her for life. In his heart he must have known 
that Bella had always been reticent, timorous, shy, 
even a little afraid of him, yet he soon and easily 
brought himself to think with his family that she 


132 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


and her mother, ambitious of so desirable an 
alliance, had deliberately snared him. They had 
made a fool of him and everybody knew it; he knew 
it also now. His resentment battened on the 
thought till he was obsessed by a morose sense of 
humiliation, and, finding it unendurable, pro¬ 
ceeded to vindicate himself in the eyes of those 
whose respect he had forfeited by an emphatic 
assertion of his lapsed supremacy. 

He discontinued going home regularly for tea. 
When he did go, he went out again immediately 
after with an off-hand: 

“No good me stickin’ indoors with all this sewin’ 
messin’ the place up. I may be a bit late, so you 
needn’t sit up for me.” 

They used to sit up for him, nevertheless, and, 
whilst he wallowed luxuriously with his cronies in 
the beer of the “White Swan,” Bella and her 
mother were dutifully sewing until their eyes and 
their fingers ached and it was as much as they 
could do not to fall asleep over the work that kept 
the household going and left most of Gus’s earnings 
in the margin he required for his own comfort. 

Gus strongly disapproved of these late sittings, 
believing they were obstinately maintained as a 
tacit reproach to himself, and he testified his dis- 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 133 


approval sometimes with plain and coloured words, 
sometimes with lowering looks and a menacing 
silence that were worse, sometimes by forcibly 
sweeping all the sewing from the table to the floor 
and truculently refusing to allow Mrs. Ward to 
stop and pick it up, always with a sufficient 
effectiveness to drive his tactful mother-in-law to 
eliminate herself instantly and retreat in fear and 
trembling to her own bedroom. 

Generally he was incoherent and obviously more 
or less feverish from his evening devotions; but 
there came a night when, having gone rather 
beyond those limits of enjoyment, he lurched in 
noisily, held on to the door for a minute, blinking 
as if he were uncertain where he was, staggered a 
few paces, swept the sewing to the floor without 
comment, strode rapidly past to the corner where 
the bed stood, flung himself on it at random and 
lay breathing stertorously with his mouth open. 

Bella gazed on him, shocked, with the tears 
welling into her eyes. 

'‘He’s all right, my dear,” said her mother 
softly. “Don’t disturb him. I’ve had yer father 
like this now an’ then—not often, but now an’ then. 
Let him ’ave his sleep out. Make him as com¬ 
fortable as we can an’ let him ’ave his sleep out. 


134 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


that’s all, an’ he’ll be none the worse in the 
morning.” 

With the ready, cautious movements of one not 
unaccustomed to such an emergency, she began to 
unlace his boots, but was only just pulling off the 
first when, as if some consciousness of the indignity 
he suffered in submitting to her ministrations 
reached him through his sodden snooze, he stirred 
tetchily, heaved himself up on one arm and, 
glaring menacingly toward her, began to speak in 
accents so thick and faltering that he was almost 
unintelligible: 

“Le’ me be. D’yer hear! Le’ my boots alone. 
Go on! You’re sneakin’ an’ pokin’ abart in my 
room a sight too much. You clear out of it while 
you’re all right, an’ keep out—see?” He waved 
a vague arm in the direction of the door. “Hear 
me? Go on! Clear out—d’yer hear?” 

Mrs. Ward hesitated, a tremulous remonstrance 
rising to her lips, but Gus made an angry move¬ 
ment to get up, so she thought better of it and 
withdrew hurriedly, softly closing the door after 
her. 

From that night a distorted idea seemed to take 
possession of Gus that Mrs. Ward was a costly and 
unwarrantable intruder upon his domestic privacy. 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 135 


“ She’s got to go. I don’t want her here, an* I 
won’t ’ave her,” he was constantly nagging at 
Bella. “You tell ’er I said so. She’s got to take 
’er bleed’n hook. She ain’t goin’ to stop here, 
you tell her so. If I ’ave to tell ’er, there’ll be a 
hell of a row, so I warn yer.” 

Once Bella ventured a very gentle, deferential 
suggestion that the home and nearly all the furni¬ 
ture belonged to her mother. 

“’Er furniture, is it?” Gus retorted irascibly. 
“Who pays the rent here? I do, don’t I? I give 
you the money anyway, an’ if that don’t make it 
my place, what does? An’ if she wants ’er blarsted 
furniture let ’er pay up for ’er keep since she’s bin 
livin’ with me, an’ the sooner the better.” 

Bella would have pointed out that her mother 
was more than maintaining herself all the while, 
and that some weeks Gus did not even yield enough 
to meet the demands of the landlord, but his 
truculence intimidated her, and when she broached 
the subject to Mrs. Ward that much experienced 
lady besought her not to argue with him on her 
account. 

“It’s no good, my dear,” she said, “no good at 
all. He don’t mean it about me goin’ really, an’ 
contradictin’ and arguin’ would only make him do 


136 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


it out o’ spite. He’s very like your poor father 
used to be now an’ then, an’ that masterful an* 
contrary that the on’y way to manage ’im is to 
pretend to agree an* give way to ’im. Humor ’im, 
Bella, my dear, that’s the on’y way. You leave 
’im to me, an’ don’t contradict ’im an’ don’t worry. 
I’ll manage ’im safe enough.” 

In pursuance of which policy she was careful to 
dodge out as soon as Gus’s step sounded in the 
street, and get into her own room before he 
entered. 

Occasionally, very occasionally, by way of 
experiment, she would linger when she heard him 
and meet him with strained, wan smiles of welcome 
and apologetic cringes; but instead of showing 
signs of relenting he swore at her viciously, when¬ 
ever she gave him this chance of encountering her, 
and once, turning on her suddenly, struck her, and 
hustled her out of the room with so much violence 
that Bella, meek and timid as she was, was stung 
to an outbreak of indignant remonstrance. 

Which had the disastrous effect of bringing the 
full force of his wrath down upon herself. He was 
foully abusive and threatening; he accused her and 
her mother of sponging on him and playing the fool 
with him, and, lashed to a drunken frenzy by the 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 137 


contemplation of his wrongs, irritated by her 
silence and her tears, he hit out at her, first with 
his open hand, then, grown reckless, with his 
fist. 

Alarmed by the sound of blows, and by Bella’s 
terrified appeals, Mrs. Ward, who had been listen¬ 
ing outside, rushed in again. 

“Oh, Gus, my dear!” she cried persuasively. 
“Bella!—whatever ’ave you bin doin’ to upset ’im 
like this? How often ’ave I told you not to cross 
and contradict ’im? ’E can’t stand it—it ain’t 
to be expected of ’im—an’ I wonder at you, Bella, 
I really do! There now, Gus, it’s all right, my 
dear boy, an’ she won’t do it agen-” 

Instead of accepting her specious champion¬ 
ship as in the nature of incense, Gus swung round 
rampant, and gripping her by both arms shook her 
till her teeth chattered. 

“What’s it got to do with you, yer damn old 
cow!” he raged. “Mind yer own business. I 
know what yer mean. I know what you’re after. 
I’ve told you before, I won’t ’ave none o’ your 
bleed’n lip, an’ I’ve told you before to clear out o’ 
this, and out you’re goin’. Mother Ward! You’ve 
had lots o’ chawnce, and I don’t give you no more. 
. . . Oh, no, you won’t keep to yer back room 


138 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


neether—I’m goin’ to give that up, and I’m not 
goin’ to ’ave you spyin’ about on me—not for 
another bloomin’ day. . . . Never you mind 
abart yer furniture. That’s mine. I’ll take care 
o’ that. All you got to do is to go—an’ I’ll see you 
do it!” 

He punctuated his remarks with a blow or two 
that she was not successful in evading. 

Deaf to her pleas and wheedling protests, he half 
pushed, half dragged her out into the dark little 
passage, and then, fairly pitching her into the 
street, slammed the door on her and bolted it. 

If other lodgers in the house were disturbed by 
the uproar, they were too wise to interfere. They 
had domestic differences of their own to attend to 
at times and would not presume to meddle in a 
neighbour’s affairs uninvited. 

Mrs. Ward hovered without for a while, trying 
to reach Gus’s heart through the closed door; but 
he was impervious to her as to Bella, who tear¬ 
fully supplemented her mother’s appealings from 
within. 

“ She ain’t cornin’ in no more. That’s straight! ” 
Gus reiterated stubbornly, with his back to the 
door. “If you don’t want another row an’ a swipe 
on the jaw, you go on in the room an’ stop there an’ 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 139 


leave me alone. . . . She’s got to go, I tell yer. 
I won’t ’ave her here.” He diverged into indefinite 
blasphemy. “If she wants any more tellin’ she’ll 
git more than is good for her if I ’ave to go out to 
’er.” 

“Never mind. It’s all right, Bella,” Mrs. Ward 
called through despairingly, at last. “I’ll go to 
my sister’s.” Fortunately she had a sister living 
within an easy walk. “I’ll see you to-morrow. 
Don’t you worry about me. Good night, Gus.” 

He did not respond, and Bella could not, for her 
sobs choked her; but the sound of retreating foot¬ 
steps told them that Mrs. Ward had yielded to the 
inevitable. 

She reappeared next morning, an hour after Gus 
was gone, and, having mingled tears of sympathy, 
she and Bella settled down as usual to their accus¬ 
tomed day’s sewing. But she was careful to depart 
well ahead of the possible time of Gus’s home¬ 
coming, and took with her enough of the tailoring 
to keep her occupied till bed-time. 

She was scarcely out of the house when Gus 
came in accompanied by a perky, shabby-genteel 
bibulous-looking gentleman who measured and 
appraised the sideboard with a knowing eye, and to 
Bella’s amazement, offered to purchase it for eight 


140 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


shillings. Gus haggled with him, and by reluctant 
stages the price rose to ten-and-six, which sum 
having been handed over, Gus cleared everything 
out of that article of furniture and, without a word 
of explanation or any reference whatever to Bella, 
helped the purchaser to carry it to a truck that 
waited outside for its conveyance. 

After it was too late, Bella marvelled at her own 
silent acquiescence in this pillage; she was com¬ 
pletely cowed and felt she had neither courage nor 
strength to dare his displeasure, and so offered 
nothing but the feeblest ineffectual objections 
when, in the course of the ensuing fortnight, Gus 
appeared at intervals with the same bibulous 
satellite and cleared out her mother’s bedroom, in 
order that the landlord might relet it, and sold 
those goods, and a couple of chairs and sundry 
ornaments from the front room, for as much as 
they would fetch. 

Mrs. Ward learned of these proceedings, when 
she came in his absences, with impotent 
lamentations. 

“Still,” she argued resignedly with Bella, “I 
s’pose we must put up with it. It’s my fur¬ 
niture and I could stop *im, or ’ave ’im up at the 
Court for it, but that would only make ’im nas- 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 141 


tier than ever, an’ he’s so masterful and high- 
spirited there’s no knowin’ what he mightn’t do 
to us both. ’E’s bin losin’ heavy at bettin’, you 
may depend, an’ that’s why he had to git money 
somehow, and when ’e has a bit o’luck it’ll make 
’im better tempered an’ he’ll buy other things in 
place of ’em, an’ then I’ll come back quietly, an’ 
nothin’ said, an’ ’e’ll let me stop ’ere with you an’ 
won’t care. You see. Don’t say nothin’ to turn 
’im worse. ’E wants humourin’, that’s all.” She 
stemmed the flow of her optimism and, with a du¬ 
bious side-glance at Bella, added, “’E’s bin a bit 
wild like, an’ chuckin’ ’is money about lately. 
I dessay they’ve told you ’e’s bin seen about a lot 
with that Dolly ’Arris, the gel he threw over when 
he married you?” 

Bella nodded without looking up, for her eyes 
had filled with tears. 

“Oh, I tell yer—they’re all alike, men are,” 
sighed Mrs. Ward. “You can’t expect ’im to 
settle down quiet all at once. But if you make a 
fuss it’s only so much the worse for yer. I know 
’ow it was with me an’ yer poor father. Humour 
’im, an’ make ’im as comfortable as yer can an’ 
’e’ll git tired of all this larkin’ about an’ settle 
down right enough by an’ by. You see.” 


142 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


She spoke confidently, as one wise from experi¬ 
ence, yet she was apparently mistaken. 

The very night after she enunciated this philo¬ 
sophy, Gus did not come home at all. Bella sat 
up for him wearily, hour after hour, going often to 
the door to peer up the squalid, empty street, and 
to listen. She slept fitfully on the bed without 
undressing, and early in the morning, on the advice 
of a passing policeman, paid fruitless visits to the 
two nearest police stations, and, later, as a forlorn 
hope, went to enquire at the mineral-water factory. 
Here she was informed that Gus had been dis¬ 
charged over a week ago for assaulting his foreman, 
which threw some light on the selling of the furni¬ 
ture, though it accounted for nothing else. 

For several days she continued her search, with¬ 
out avail. Then a rumour gained currency in the 
neighbourhood that Gus was living near Barking 
and had work at the Docks, and it coupled his 
name significantly with that of Dolly Harris. 

On this, by a tacit understanding, Mrs. Ward 
discontinued sleeping at her sister’s and re-entered 
upon residence with Bella. Little was said be¬ 
tween them of Gus’s disloyalty; through days and 
nights of weeping Bella came, at length, to a bleak, 
hopeless resignation, and the two women took up 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 143 


the thread of their former monotonous living as if 
Gus had never broken it. 

But they could not long persist in that monotony. 

To begin with, there was the baby. 

It was born five months after Gus’s desertion 
and was at once recognised by all who saw it as a 
small rejuvenation of Gus himself; in spite of which 
even Mrs. Ward fell in love with it and discovered 
an absurd delight in sacrificing herself to its com¬ 
fort and amusement; whilst Bella made it the very 
god of her idolatry. 

And her devotion to it so revivified her devotion 
to Gus that her heart hungered for him more and 
more, and there was kindled on the underside of 
all her yearnings a fire-hot hatred and jealousy of 
the shameless hussy who had lured him away from 
her. 

She had thoughts of going to him and beseeching 
him to be reconciled to her for the baby’s sake, for 
she was a spiritless little creature of that sort and 
had almost no pride; but she was deterred by a 
dread of how he might receive her intrusion, and 
waited, soothing herself with a fancy that one day 
he would remember how she loved him, and be 
sorry, and come back, and everything could then 
be forgotten, and they would be happy. 


144 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


But the baby was half a year old before he came; 
and this was the manner of his coming. 

News was wafted into Somerset Street that Gus 
had met with an accident at the Docks. The news, 
which was already some weeks old, resolved itself 
into a story that Gus’s leg had been badly crushed, 
and he was now in hospital, recovering from an 
amputation, 

The hearing of this brought Bella to such an 
instant resolve that she hastened up the street to 
the house of Gus’s family and knocked. His 
mother opened the door, and stared at her for¬ 
biddingly. They knew each other by sight, 
though they had never been on speaking terms. 

“Oh, I have heard about Gus, Mrs. Parry,” 
Bella faltered, trembling, “and they say you’ve 
had a letter from him. Will you tell me, please, 
which hospital he is in ?” 

“No, that I won’t!” cried the other harshly. 
“If you an’ yer mother hadn’t nagged an’ ’ounded 
an’ driven ’im away, this would never have hap¬ 
pened. ’E don’t want none of you, an’ you won’t 
git nothink here, so don’t you think it! ” 

Whereupon, she drew back and banged the door 
decisively, and Bella turned away in despair. 

In the ensuing days she tramped miles to differ- 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 145 


ent hospitals in search of him, but to no purpose; 
then, at last, one frosty evening she had been to 
deliver some work she and her mother had finished, 
and was carrying back a fresh supply in a clumsy 
bundle when she was aware of a familiar figure 
halting along Shoreditch High Street in front of 
her. It was familiar, yet with a difference; and 
the difference was that it went on crutches. 

A great pity of him surged through her tumultu¬ 
ously, and, before she could consider how he might 
greet her, she had overtaken him. 

“Gus!” she ejaculated. 

He stopped, and stared at her. 

“Oh, Gus—I’m so sorry!” she said, her heart 
so fluttering in her throat that she could scarcely 
speak. “I’ve been looking for you, my dear, ever 
since I knew. ... I want you to come back—to 
come home. Will you?” 

He glowered on her sullenly. 

As a fact, Dolly having discreetly deserted him, 
he was on his way home at this moment to see how 
best, by humility or self-assertion, he could arrive 
at a compromise there. He might have gone to his 
mother, but, knowing the roughness of her tongue 
and the taunts and reproaches he would have to 
endure when she tired of the burden of him, he felt 


146 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


he could be happier brazening out the past by his 
own fireside. He did not mention this, however, 
and his silence moved Bella to repeat her entreaty. 

“Willyou, Gus?” 

“No. I dunno,” he growled resentfully. “I’m 
sick of it!” 

“Do come, Gus,” she pleaded. “You’ve never 
even seen baby yet. He—he’s exactly like you, 
Gus; everybody says so. . . . Will you?” 

“ Oh, I dunno! What yer want to keep badgerin’ 
me for?” he snarled; then, glancing down at the 
empty trouser-leg pinned up out of the way, he 
began to whimper. “Nice sort o’ thing you’ve 
bin an’ done for me between yer—some of 
yer. ...” 

Too full of pity to feel the injustice of this in¬ 
nuendo, she laid her hand on his arm and renewed 
her gentle persuasions until he allowed himself to 
show signs of yielding. 

“Well, now, look ’ere!—if I do,” he stipulated 
grudgingly, “I ain’t goin’ to ’ave no snivellin’ an’ 
naggin’ and no jaw—not from you nor your mother 
eether. See that ? ” 

“Yes, dear. You know I won’t. And mother 
wouldn’t—she will be so glad to see you,” Bella 
urged anxiously. “So will baby.” 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 147 


Without replying, he walked on with her, and 
mindful of his warning against snivelling she main¬ 
tained a tactful silence all the way home. 

His interest in the baby was obviously limited. 
He made no pretence of such pleasure in meeting 
Mrs. Ward again as she affected on meeting him; 
but he permitted her to rejoice volubly over the 
reunion, and tactily consented to her continued 
presence by his hearth. 


hi 

If anybody had hoped, however, that the 
accidental loss of his leg and the acquisition of a 
baby would have permanently chastening effects 
upon Gus Parry, that sanguine person was fore¬ 
ordained to disappointment. 

He accepted Bella’s pardon as indifferently and 
with as much sulky complacence as if it were his of 
right, and she conceded it wistfully, eagerly, as if 
she were giving him only what belonged to him. 
Both she and her mother submitted to his fretful 
humours and yielded propitiatingly to the petty 
tyranny he gradually reasserted over them, in the 
hope that he would accept their complete surrender 


/ 


148 WITH THE GILT OFF 

so favourably that he would not insist on banishing 
Mrs. Ward again into outer loneliness. 

And this hope was realised. He never uttered a 
wish that Mrs. Ward should leave them, being 
prompted to this magnanimity by the sage con¬ 
sideration that two women devoted to tailoring 
work could earn more than one, and might, 
between them contrive to support him in so much 
the more comfort. Also, there was little Gus—* 
Mrs. Ward was useful in nursing him while Bella 
got her husband’s meals ready and otherwise 
ministered to his comfort. 

He disseminated a vague understanding that 
such a state of things was only tolerated until he 
succeeded in obtaining a situation, and the con¬ 
sciousness that they were aware of this fortified 
him in his assumption of independence and helped 
him to resume despotic control of his household 
with an easy and swaggering confidence. 

The sort of employment suited to the capacity 
of a one-legged man seemed difficult to find. 
Anyhow, Gus never managed to find it. But 
neither of the two women, who housed and fed and 
clothed him and kept him in pocket-money, spoke 
of this in his presence; Mrs. Ward because of the 
wholesome fear she had of his violent temper; Bella, 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 149 


a little perhaps because she was afraid of him, but 
more because she pitied him, and, in the strange 
way that women will, loved him, and was glad to 
have him back on any terms rather than that 
he should be lost to her. 

So Gus spent most of his days lounging at the 
“White Swan”; in the bar when it was open, and 
outside on Sundays, gossiping with any passing pal 
who would linger when it was closed. At regular 
intervals he carried himself home on his crutches 
for meals. He was never told, and never appeared 
to notice, that though meat was always provided 
for his dinner there were days when Bella and Mrs. 
Ward had been constrained to content themselves 
with an earlier repast of bread-and-cheese—having 
it earlier so that the contrast between their meal 
and his might not disquiet him. And, so far from 
seeming to suspect their duplicity, he grumbled 
roundly of the shortcomings in quality or cooking 
of whatever was placed before him; and, now and 
then, when hard circumstances would not permit of 
their offering him anything better than the poor 
fare they were themselves reduced to, he would 
grow abusive and menacing, swear that, though 
he asked little enough of them, they grudged him 
every mouthful he ate and every penny they 


150 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


granted him—that they looked after themselves 
all right when he was not there to see, and stinted 
and half starved him, and did all they could to 
make him feel his dependence—and all because he 
happened to be a cripple and so unable to work 
for his own living and theirs. 

He harried them so often with these outrageous 
assertions that he brought himself, at last, to a 
fixed belief in the truth of them. He never wearied 
of reiterating the story of his wrongs to cronies who 
foregathered with him at the “Swan,” and they 
invariably accepted his view of the situation, 
strengthened him in his resentment of it, condoled 
with him, and sometimes supplemented their sym¬ 
pathy with gratuitous beer. 

“When I was all right and could work for 
myself,” he maundered, “damn it, I worked. 
Didn’t I, George?” 

“Course you did, Gus old man,” George readily 
agreed. 

“And now I’ve lorst my leg, and can’t get a job 
I can do, if it ain’t my wife’s place to look arter me 
an’ ’elp me, whose place is it?” 

“That’s it, Gus. But these blarsted women are 
all alike. Don’t you take no notice what they say. 
Let ’em jaw. You make ’em give you what you 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 151 


want, an’ plenty of it. I would, if it was me. If 
two of them can’t keep you and one baby between 
’em, it’s becos they don’t bleed’n well try, that’s 
all abart it.” 

“I’ll see if they won’t try! I spent pounds an’ 
pounds on ’em when I’d got it. They don’t play 
no games with me! I let ’er ’ave too much her 
own way. She wanted/er mother to come an’ live 
along with us. I don’t want her. But I let ’er 
’ave ’er, an’ this is all I git for it!” 

“Ah! You’re too easy with ’em. They do 
what they likes with you. They wouldn’t ’ave 
me like that.” 

“You did chuck the old lady out, once upon a 
time, Gus, didn’t yer?” struck in another. “I 
sort of remember ’earin’-” 

“That was a long while ago, that was, an’ quite 
right, too. I married ’er daughter, an’ more fool 
me, but I didn’t marry the old woman as well, did 
I? Very well, then. Think I was goin’ to work 
for ’er an’ my missis too? Not much. I may be a 
fool, but I ain’t such a bluggy fool as that. Besides 
she brought it on ’erself. I stood as much of ’er as 
I could, then I told her to sling, an’ took damn 
good care that she did. But, when I come ’ome 
after my accident, I found she’d sneaked rhand 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


152 

behind my back an’ settled darn in my place agen, 
an’ I didn’t want to ’ave no row, as long as she 
behaved herself, so I let ’er stop.” 

“Yus, they get rhand you. They takes advan¬ 
tage of yer. It don’t do. These blarsted women 
—the more you give ’em, the more they take. 
Never give them nothin’ at all, then they don’t 
expect nothin’. That’s my motter.” 

Gus acquiesced in this philosophy; and the 
behaviour of Bella and her mother certainly 
justified him in doing so. 

In their meek and spiritless fashion they adopted 
his view of the general situation and made it their 
own. They forgot whatever might have given him 
no claim on their generosity; so completely did he 
impose his will and his way of thought upon them, 
and so anxious were they to propitiate and dwell 
at peace with him, that they almost ceased to 
murmur against him even behind his back. 

As soon as he felt quite secure, as soon as he 
knew by experiment that he could safely presume 
upon the fondness of one and the fears of both, he 
indulged his natural inclinations without restraint. 
He began to levy heavier toll on their scanty earn¬ 
ings in order to meet his expenses at the “White 
Swan”; and had no qualms against ending his day 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 153 


in a condition that made it necessary for one of his 
comrades to assist him homewards on his crutches, 
deposit him in a heap on the doorstep, and knock, 
and leave him to be taken in and put to bed. 
Moreover, in his worst moods, when he was drunk 
as when he was sober, he renewed the imperious 
savagery of his robuster years, and enforced 
instant obedience to his wishes with his fist, or by 
hitting out recklessly with whichever end of his 
crutch came handiest. 

You may wonder that, at least, Mrs. Ward did 
not revolt against these excesses. But you have to 
remember that old usage had made them familiar 
to her and less terrible than a stranger would 
imagine. She had been subject to similar treat¬ 
ment under the rule of her late husband, and had 
grown to regard it as incident to the normal 
conditions of existence. She shrank, too, from 
leaving her daughter without an ally, and still 
more from living elsewhere in solitude, or with a 
married sister who had no desire to shelter her. 
And more than everything else—there was the 
baby. She had become passionately attached to 
little Gus, delighted to work for him and help in 
his upbringing, and would have been willing 
to suffer and make the best of nearly anything that 


154 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


could happen to her sooner than be torn from his 
foolish, fond embraces and be shut out from all 
sight of him. 

Little Gus distributed his affection between the 
two women indiscriminately. It was impossible 
to say which was most unreservedly and slavishly 
devoted to him; but each in her secret heart 
believed he cherished a preference for herself, and 
was more or less jealous of any special sign of love 
he exhibited for the other. * 

But when the boy was in his fourth year Gus 
himself began to reveal a marked interest and 
amusement in him—would tease him playfully, 
nurse him, humour him, make much of him; and 
it presently became apparent to the watchful 
women-folk that the small autocrat’s father was 
fast becoming a potent rival to both of them. 

“But I’m so glad he likes little Gus,” Bella re¬ 
marked thoughtfully, as she and her mother sat 
sewing, with the child asleep on the bed behind 
them. “It keeps him at home more than he used 
to be.” 

“Not much,” sighed Mrs. Ward; adding with a 
sudden impatience: “I wish he’d show ’is liking 
by doing something else besides playing for him.” 

Bella did not respond. They sewed busily in 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 155 


silence, with an air of having stumbled on a for¬ 
bidden topic which neither had the temerity to 
discuss in detail. 

Gus grew undeniably fond of the child, and, after 
a time, jealous of endearments he bestowed on any 
but himself. Once, when the little chap was ailing 
he spent most of three days fidgeting at home, 
nursing and fussing over him and trying untiringly 
to keep him amused. After his recovery, little Gus 
continued to exert a beneficial restraint upon his 
sire, though his influence with him was, on the 
whole, superficial and intermittent. On the other 
hand, Gus’s love for his small son was really harm¬ 
ful to the boy, for he laughingly gave way to his 
perverse whims and fancies, insisting, with testy 
blasphemy if they seemed reluctant, on Bella and 
Mrs. Ward being equally complaisant. As a 
natural result, Gus junior became more and more 
wilful and defiant of control as he increased in 
years, and more attached to the father who could 
be relied upon to confirm and shield him in even 
flagrant disobediences. 

Occasionally the boy taxed Mrs. Ward’s patience 
beyond all limits. One evening Gus returned and 
found him crying, and, learning that he had under¬ 
gone mild, but definite, correction at the hands of 


156 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


his grandmother, chased the old lady about the 
room aiming smashing blows at her and shattering 
an ornament or two with his crutch, till, alarmed 
by the malignity of his aspect, she dodged success¬ 
fully into the street, and remained there so long as 
his fury lasted. 

“You lay a finger on ’im agen, you old hag,” 
spluttered Gus, shaking a fist at her from the 
window, “and out you go, neck an’ crop, like you 
went before, and next time you don’t come back. 
I’ll take good care o’ that. If you do. I’ll swing for 
you, you interferin’ old blighter!” 

By such an alliance, and with such like threats 
and shows of violence, he and little Gus established 
a joint tyranny, and for the sake of peace and in 
the poor hope of currying favour with the younger 
tyrant and through him, perhaps, with his senior, 
the two women subscribed to it assiduously and 
with a servile eagerness to please. 

No sooner was the child able to walk and talk 
than Gus insisted on taking him out and, swinging 
himself through the streets on his crutches, laughed 
proudly to see the sturdy, squat figure trotting 
bravely beside him. He would exhibit the young¬ 
ster at the “Swan,” boasting of his quaint preco¬ 
city, and his cronies there entertained themselves 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 157 


by plying the small fellow with questions, and 
guffawed uproariously at the oddity of his an¬ 
swers. 

By the time young Gus was seven, the company 
at the “White Swan” was familiar with the sight 
of his dumpy figure standing on the bar counter 
while he shrilled out a recitation of “Ten Little 
Niggers,” which he had picked up from his mother, 
or piped some doubtful music-hall absurdity with 
his grinning audience roaring lustily in the 
chorus. 

It was a relief to the two women, who suspected 
and fretted over these phases of his career, when 
the School Attendance Officer made an uncom¬ 
promising nuisance of himself and, to escape the 
annoyance and the cost of a summons, little Gus 
was sent to school. 

This, however, did not remove him beyond his 
father’s control. Gus would go to meet him of 
evenings and, instead of sending him home to tea, 
would carry him eventually to the “Swan,” where 
one or other of the regular attendants could be 
relied on to furnish the diminutive visitor with 
angel-cakes, and he was accorded the privilege of 
occasional sips from his parent’s glass. 

Falling so entirely under his father’s training, 


158 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


growing wise in his habits, adopting his ideals, 
admiring his truculence and, by-and-by, rising to a 
conscious pride in the eminence his progenitor still 
enjoyed among his mates by virtue of the glamor¬ 
ous gallantries, the raw fighting powers and ram¬ 
pant hooliganism of his earlier years, it was nothing 
strange that the young Gus should develop into a 
soulless, insensitive youth, whose heroes in the 
neighbourhood were the sorry rascals who corus¬ 
cated in the local police-court, and whose private 
ambitions tended towards crude lawlessness and 
the achievement of notable but inglorious ex¬ 
ploits. 

Leaving school, in due course, he was placed, by 
adroit management on the part of his mother, as 
errand boy to a greengrocer. Gus himself surlily 
approved of this proceeding, for he was too shrewd 
not to recognise the value of a third wage-earner 
in the family. He was still able to monopolise the 
lad’s leisure, to hover about him and negotiate 
trivial loans, when he was cornered for an immedi¬ 
ate copper, and on Saturdays to meet him and 
deduct a substantial tax from his week’s salary 
before he had a chance to spend it on himself, or 
before it could be abstracted from him at home and 
dissipated in the dull service of domestic economy. 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 159 


IV 

Young Gus did not remain long with the green¬ 
grocer. A fever for backing “winners,” which he 
had contracted from his father, involved him in 
expenses to which the size of his income was 
grossly inadequate; and, with a view to adjusting 
the difference, he resorted to a perilous expedient 
of acquiring small change that did not belong to 
him. Now and then he had breathless opportuni¬ 
ties to conjure with the till; now and then, with 
moneys paid to him by customers when he deliv¬ 
ered goods at their doors; but the mysterious dis¬ 
appearances from the till and petty objections 
urged by more than one customer to paying the 
same bill twice over roused the greengrocer’s sus¬ 
picions and, having rather artfully verified them, 
he suddenly dismissed young Gus in a manner 
and with words that were candid but lacking in 
politeness. 

Thereafter, young Gus transferred his activities 
to fishmongery; and, later, obtained a reputation 
of sorts in a barber’s shop, a butcher’s, and a furni¬ 
ture dealer’s, narrowly evading prosecution and 
being dismissed from each situation for the same 
idiosyncrasy that had displeased the greengrocer. 


160 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


Without references, he found it increasingly hard 
to secure regular employment, and was glad to 
fulfil occasional engagements in the service of 
streethawkers and miscellaneous costermongers 
who required an extra hand in busy seasons, lend¬ 
ing unskilled assistance in stable-yards or auction 
rooms, or wheresoever odd jobs of any kind were to 
be had. In his spare hours he lounged and smoked 
at street comers or in public-houses with his father, 
and dedicated rare nights to revelry and to brilliant 
experimental efforts towards building up for him¬ 
self a lurid and untamed notoriety in the locality 
that should vie with the one that his father had 
lost. 

It was not until he was turned twenty that his 
promising career was abruptly and unpleasantly 
interrupted. 

One foggy evening, under a railway arch, in a 
byway of Hoxton which was deserted and in course 
of demolition, a policeman stumbled over an 
impediment lying across the pavement. Stooping 
he discovered it to be the body of an old gentleman 
who had an ugly wound in the back of his head. 
He proved to be an old gentleman very well known 
in the district, who owned a lot of small house 
property thereabouts and, for years past, had made 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 161 


a practice of going round weekly to collect his rents 
in person. 

When he revived in the hospital, he could tell 
the police no more than that some unseen assailant 
had struck him from behind, in the foggy dimness 
under the arch, and a further investigation dis¬ 
closed that a sum of twenty pounds or so which had 
been in his pockets was missing. 

For the better part of a fortnight the police could 
not hit upon the ghost of a clue to the criminal; 
and, lulled to a false sense of security by this pass¬ 
ing of time, young Gus ventured to indulge his 
vanity by bragging knowingly to a select few in 
strict confidence. Getting less cautious, with his 
continued immunity, he bragged once too often, 
and was unexpectedly arrested and lodged in a cell 
on information covertly supplied against him by a 
man he had believed he could trust. 

His father, appalled at this catastrophe, went 
about stunned with misery, and as horrified at 
what might be the consequences of the crime as if 
it were himself he feared for. 

Bella and Mrs. Ward, their first passion of 
weeping over, sold some bits of furniture and toiled 
desperately to raise money for the boy’s defence. 
They persuaded themselves that he was innocent; 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


162 

that, despite their knowledge of his degeneration, it 
was impossible he could be guilty of so ruthless a 
brutality—for they remembered him as he had 
been, the helpless, guileless baby they had loved 
and hushed to sleep in their arms, and, so 
remembering, it was not possible for them to 
believe anything so bad as this of him. 

He was adequately defended by a clever lawyer. 
They pinched and denied themselves in every way 
to provide for that. In the dock he pleaded not 
guilty, and would say no more; but the detectives 
had sedulously gathered stray shreds of evidence 
from divers quarters and woven them into such a 
clear and convincing pattern that the jury brought 
in their verdict without hesitation, and the judge, 
commenting on the barbarous nature of the 
offence, passed a five years’ sentence, telling the 
prisoner to think himself fortunate it had not 
been necessary to make the charge against him one 
of murder instead of robbery with violence. 

To the last young Gus had cherished a blind con¬ 
fidence that, as nobody saw him do it, there was no 
real evidence, and he was bound to get off, and 
this hearing of his doom crushed and staggered him. 
He threw a bewildered glance round and saw in the 
crowd at the rear of the Court the worn, white face 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 163 


of his mother, and the older, weary face of his 
grandmother, and, with the heartbreak of that 
vision melting him, he yielded dazedly to the 
touch of the warder’s hand, and vanished down 
the stairs under the dock. 

His mother obtained permission to see hi m for a 
few minutes before the prison van took him away; 
and her grief and her compassion and his own 
overwhelming sense of his calamity so broke his 
pride that, clinging to her and with his face hidden 
against her breast, he sobbed out a confession that 
he had hitherto withheld from everyone, and a 
terrible hatred and anger, such as had never 
possessed her meek spirit before, grew and 
strengthened in her as she listened. 

Outside the Court she presently rejoined Mrs. 
Ward, and round the corner of the Street Gus, who, 
possibly from disagreeable force of associations, or 
because he shrank from witnessing his son’s fate, 
had preferred to wait at a distance, met them 
with a nervous, deprecating quietness that was new 
to him. 

“Is it over?” he whined humbly; though he 
knew it was, for they were unaccompanied and he 
saw the shadow of disaster in their eyes. 

Bella walked on stonily, without replying. 


164 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


It was Mrs. Ward who answered him and, too 
stupefied to offer any comment, he plodded on a 
few paces behind them, blanched and speechless. 
His features were drawn as with bodily pain; his 
arrogant self-assertion was wrung out of him, and 
he dragged his crutched carcase over the stones, as 
limp and feeble and lost a figure of a man as the 
passers-by had ever seen wandering abroad. 

In this manner, the two women ahead of him, 
the man dropping continually farther and a little 
farther behind, they progressed silently till they 
reached home. 

At the door of the house Bella sent her mother 
in, and turning in the doorway waited for Gus with 
a strange and daunting air of implacable resolve. 

“You are not coming in here,” she said, when he 
came, and said it with a firmness and fierceness the 
more terrible since they were so foreign to all he 
had known of her. “You may go where you like 
—I’ll never—never have you here again. Oh, I 
wish I had never taken you back! If he had 
grown up only with us, as he was at first, and you 
had never come near him-” 

“Bella!” he gasped. “What d’yer mean? 
What ’ave I done?” 

“You know what you’ve done, you cur!—you 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 165 


coward!” she cried, struggling piteously against 
her emotion. “ You know who’s brought my poor 
lad to this. You know who put him on to rob his 
masters when he was doing honest work! You 
know who told him to do what he is suffering for 
now. He knew nothing of that rent collector, or 
that he would have so much money in his pocket. 
You knew, and you made him do what you were 
afraid to do yourself. And where’s the money? 
Who had nearly all the money the poor foolish 
fellow has stolen? . . . Oh, God, oh God!—and 
you his father!” 

“Not so loud, Bella,” he implored, aghast at her 
vehemence. 

“I don’t care who hears,” she cried. “My poor 
boy! . . . Oh, if I had never let you come back! 
If I had only done my duty by him, as I ought to 
have done, and kept you away from him! But 
whatever happens I’ll never give way to you any 
more—I’ve done with you. You shall not come in 
here!” 

“Don’t, Bella,” he whimpered. “People’ll ’ear 
yer. And look at me—a cripple. You won’t turn 
me out. ...” 

“I wish I’d turned you out when he was a baby 
—I wish I had! Then I might have saved him. 


166 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


. . . No, I’ll not be quiet. I don’t care wlio 
hears! If ever you dare to come here again I’ll tell 
the police what he told me, and you shall be 
punished with him, as you deserve to be. . . . 
Are you going? Are you going? I won’t hear 
you. I’ve done with you for ever and ever.” 

She stepped back as she spoke and slammed the 
door in his face. 

He lingered awhile, propped on his crutches 
staring blindly at the closed door. 

For years he had bullied and browbeaten her 
and she had never opposed him, never dared to 
rebel or betrayed any desire to do’ so. Now, she 
had suddenly turned, and he was afraid of her. 
Afraid, perhaps, not so much of her as of what she 
knew. If the boy had broken down so entirely 
that he had given him away to her, there was no 
certainty that he would not give him away to 
others, and that made his homestead less secure for 
him than he might hope to be in some place where 
he could not so readily be found. He had a little 
cash still in hand; he had friends who would strain 
a point to assist him in an hour of need; and, one 
way and another, he felt he could make shift to 
keep himself alive elsewhere for a while, until he 
was satisfied that he was out of danger. If he 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 167 


defied her and went in, he felt instinctively that, in 
her present mood, she would carry out her threat; 
the discovery she had made had quenched what 
love for him had survived in her and roused her to 
such anger and hatred that, as it was, she could 
scarcely restrain herself from avenging her son by 
having him punished as an accomplice, and he 
would be a fool to defy her. Gus had glimmering 
realisations of all this, yet in her absence he could 
not credit the change that had come upon her. 

And it was this dubiety and a last forlorn hope 
that prompted him to knock appealingly with the 
end of his crutch; and as he was timorously knock¬ 
ing for the third time she flung the door open. 

She had not removed her hat; her eyes were red 
with weeping; but no softening influence of grief 
mitigated the surprising harshness of her look and 
manner. 

“If you haven’t gone in five minutes,” she said, 
with a dangerous calmness, “I shall go round and 
tell the police what I know and bring them to you.” 

“But, Bella, how can I look arter meself—me 
like this?” he whined indicating his crippled 
figure with a gesture. “What’s to become of me?” 

“I don’t care what becomes of you now,” she 
returned viciously. “What’s become o’ my son? 


168 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


You should ha’ thought o’ that sooner, when I was 
doing everything for yer. I don’t care where you 
go, or what happens to yer—not now; but you’re 
never cornin’ here again, and if you try to I’ll put 
the police on to you, as sure as God’s in heaven! 
The furniture here’s mine and my mother’s; we 
pay the rent, and you’ve no right here. Go away, 
and go where you like, but you don’t come here— 
and I shan’t warn you any more!” 

With that, she drew back and shut him out 
again, and he heard the bolt shot. 

He delayed for another perplexed minute, staring 
at the house without seeing it, then turned like a 
man in a dream and, sullenly resigned, swung 
himself off up the street, outcast. 

v 

“ ’E’ll come back, wuss luck, ” sighed Mrs. Ward. 
“You see!” 

Bella compressed her lips, and shook her head 
decisively. 

“If he does,” she said, “he won’t be here long.” 

Mrs. Ward had uttered the same foreboding 
almost daily in the last few weeks, and Bella dis¬ 
missed it each time with much the same answer. 

And though, in so answering, she spoke perhaps 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 169 


with more confidence than she felt, she drew com¬ 
fort from a deep inner conviction that, for all his 
arrogant bluster, Gus Parry was a coward in grain; 
he had no fear of her, personally, but he was 
effectively terrified of what would probably result 
if she informed against him, and she could not 
believe he would dare her to do her worst and risk 
those consequences. 

If he did-—she was fully determined to show him 
no mercy, and did not think that anything could 
weaken her resolve. 

As the weeks went by, however, her resentment 
lost its first fierce heat, and she was dimly troubled 
with a suspicion that she was beginning to relent, 
and hoped he would not put her to the test; for any 
relenting seemed a disloyalty to the son whom his 
baseness, and her own womanly weakness had 
involved in ruin. 

Subservience was natural to her; she had endured 
much from Gus without any sense of martyrdom; 
but the wrong she could have forgiven if it had been 
inflicted only on herself she could not and would 
not let herself forgive when it was inflicted on her 
son. 

“You mark me, Vll come back, Bella,” Mrs. 
Ward insisted every time they spoke of him. “ ’E’ll 


170 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


stop away till ’e reckons you’ve ’ad time to get 
over it all, then ’e’ll come back.” 

“I shall never get over it,” Bella declared. “I 
don’t care for him like I used to—not after what 
he’s done to my poor Gus. If I hadn’t taken him 
back after he deserted me years ago, you and me 
could have kept the dear lad to ourselves, mother, 
and he wouldn’t be where he is to-day. It’ll be a 
long while before we have him with us again, but 
when he comes he shan’t find that man here to 
bring him down like this any more.” 

“Well, I ’ope you won’t change your mind,” 
said Mrs. Ward. “I used to feel just the same 
about your father at times, Bella, but I alwis gave 
way, at last, an’ give him another trial, though I 
knew it was never no good. An’ you’re very like 
me. We’re far ’appier without ’im, but I doubt 
whether you’ll be strong enough to keep it up.” 

Bella shook her head obstinately to fortify her 
resolution, but was privately perturbed by the 
same doubt. 

The most surprising thing was that for three 
years Gus made no attempt to return. They heard 
of him; as a fact, though she was ashamed to own 
so much to her mother, Bella instituted cautious 
enquiries, and was relieved to gather that he was 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 171 


picking up a living of sorts as a bookmaker’s 
tout. That was easy and congenial toil, and it 
was perhaps a preference for remaining among 
sympathetic friends beyond the chill of Bella’s 
reproachful sadness, rather than any access of 
penitence, that held him so obediently in exile. 

Being foolishly sensitive and spiritless, Bella 
trifled with a tendency to relent, until young Gus’s 
term of imprisonment was more than half over; 
then, with the date of his release coming near 
enough to cast its shadow before, she realised anew 
the perilous folly of allowing him to fall once more 
under his father’s influence, and hardened her 
heart again. 

Not until one afternoon when the fourth year of 
his banishment was beginning, did Gus make over¬ 
tures of any kind. 

“Bella in?” he enquired of Mrs. Ward, who 
answered his knock. 

“Yes, Gus,” she faltered, a-shiver with nervous¬ 
ness. 

“Oh, you needn’t frighten yerself,” he sneered. 
“I ain’t cornin’ in. Tell ’er I want to speak to ’er.” 

Mrs. Ward fluttered into the living-room with 
his message, and after momentary hesitation, 
Bella went out to him. 


172 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


She had fancied her determination might waver 
when she saw his face, but it did not. The seeing 
him again, and seeing him still defiantly unregen¬ 
erate of aspect, brought the past back upon her 
in a flash, and nerved her for the interview. 

“Well,” he said curtly, “mustn’t come in, I 
suppose?” 

“You know—you know what I said, Gus-” 

“Oh, don’t start snivelling” he interrupted 
tetchily. “I ain’t so keen on it as all that. I’m 
short o’ brass—that’s all; lorst a bit lately. That’s 
what I’m arter. I don’t arst yer to give it to me, 
so don’t go makin’ a mouthful of it. Five bob’s all 
I want—that’ll git me a bit o’ grub an’ save me 
sleepin’ in the street. Goin’ to do it for me, or 
ain’t yer? That’s all.” 

She did it for him. He accepted the cash glumly, 
and before she had fairly recovered her composure 
he was hopping off on his crutches without even 
thanking her. 

Of course, he did not repay the loan; she had not 
expected that. 

Twice in the next three months he called with 
the same object, throwing out vague hints each 
time which Bella, in fear and trembling, ignored, 
but not venturing to propose plainly that he should 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 173 


be allowed to resume his place in the household. 
Once or twice, during the same period, he waylaid 
and levied toll upon her out of doors, when she was 
carrying work home, and she was not wholly dis¬ 
pleased at this; for, though she would scarcely 
acknowledge so much to herself, she had not alto¬ 
gether ceased to care for him, and, curiously 
enough, was even a little piqued that he acquiesced 
so easily in his estrangement from her. 

Yet, on the whole, her life had never flowed so 
placidly or been less clouded than now. She and 
her mother worked together harmoniously, and 
Mrs. Ward, at any rate, hoped devoutly that the 
new order of things might continue. She felt no 
pique, nor anything but profound thankfulness 
that Gus did keep away from them. 

It was in the winter, less than six months before 
young Gus was to be set free on ticket-of-leave, 
that his father at length made a definite and rather 
moving appeal for permission to return home. He 
intercepted Bella as she was tramping from the 
city with a clumsy bundle of tailoring in her arms, 
and doggedly kept pace with her. 

“Bella,” he began, “Fm fair sick of this.” 

She glanced at him nervously, and said no¬ 
thing. 


174 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“Ain’t yer never goin’ to give us another 
chance?” 

“I did—once,” she was trying hard not to break 
down, “and—and poor Gus is sufferin’ for it.” 

“Needn’t throw that in my teeth,” he groaned. 
“Think I ain’t as sorry about all that as you are? ” 

“That don’t do him any good,” she sighed. 
“No, you see, if I’d never taken you home after 
you ran away with that gel he might have grown 
up honest and respectable. It was you made a 
thief of him—you made him steal for you, and it’s 
no thanks to you he isn’t a murderer too. Yet you 
think I’ll take you back agen,” her courage and 
determination rose as she faced the position, “and 
give you the chance to harm him agen as you’ve 
harmed him already!” 

“I don’t want to ’arm him,” he interposed 
sharply. “If I did—well, we was thick pals, me 
an’ ’im was, and I shall see ’im when ’e’s out, don’t 
you fret! I daresay ’e’d sooner come to me than 
you, if I ain’t at home.” 

Bella shrank as if he had struck her. She had 
been sometimes harrowed by a dread of this possi¬ 
bility, and now that he had shaped it in words it 
seemed real and imminent, and a danger to be no 
longer ignored. 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 175 


It was borne in upon her confusedly that what 
she had done for her son’s sake might now, for his 
sake, have to be undone. This thought took such 
hold on her that, though she put him off for the 
moment with a contribution of cash, when Gus 
lay in wait and made a similar appeal to her a 
week later nothing but the fact that her mother 
was lying dangerously ill deterred her from yield¬ 
ing to his importunities. 

“It’s no use talkin’ of it to-day, Gus,” she said 
wearily. “I did say you should never darken my 
door again, and God knows I meant it. Anyhow, 
I can’t alter my mind yet—not with mother ill in 
bed an’ needin’ to be free from worry, an’ me— 
what with havin’ to look after her—scarcely 
earning enough for the two of us.” 

“I can’t git nothin’ to do,” he complained. 
“That bookie I was toutin’ for—’e’s gorn to 
America, and if I ’adn’t got meself took up by a 
religious charity, this cold weather, I’d ’ave bin 
starved to death.” 

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help it, Gus,” she re¬ 
iterated. “I’ll manage a shillin’ or so, but it’s no 
use askin’ me to do no more, not till mother’s 
better.” 

And, to guard against her instinct to relent, she 


176 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


quickly slipped a trifle into his ready hand, and 
hurried away. 

But Mrs. Ward was not destined to get better, 
and did not especially wish to. 

“I’m old, an’ tired of everything,” she said, 
feebly. “I don’t like leavin’ you all by yourself, 
Bella—else what is there for the likes o’ me to go 
on livin’ for? But never you ’ave that man back, 
my dear—you’re ’appier an’ better off than you 
ever were with ’im, or ever could be.” 

In which settled conviction she died; and was 
buried. 

She was buried on a bleak, depressing afternoon 
in a crowded East London cemetery, and Bella was 
her only mourner. That is, she was the sole occu¬ 
pant of the one mourning carriage; but as she stood 
weeping by the grave, while the coffin was lowered 
into it, she was disturbed by a muffled groan beside 
her, and, glancing round, saw through her tears 
that Gus was propped on his crutches at her elbow, 
with his face hidden in his hat. 

No words passed between them. She was so 
miserable that her resentment against his being 
there, remembering his many unkindnesses to the 
dead woman, was leavened by a healing sense of 
the ceremonial fitness of his presence and the 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 177 


respect it implied, and by a vague consolation in 
having somebody there to make even a show of 
sharing her sorrow. 

She moved away when the parson had said his 
last word and all was finished, and Gus halted 
after her. She climbed into the mourning coach, 
and with a lift from one of the undertaker’s men, 
who took it for granted that he had been invited, 
Gus climbed in also and, looking inconsolably 
wretched, dropped into the opposite seat. 

“Ah, she was a good sort, Bella,” he moaned. 
“I was roughish on ’er now an’ then, but I allers 
liked ’er, an’ I believe she liked me—for some 
things.” 

Bella neither agreed to nor disputed this. She 
was completely subdued and broken; she was 
alone in the world and obsessed by a helpless feel¬ 
ing that circumstances were too strong for her and 
it was of no use to contend, that she could merely 
yield, in quaking fear and hoping against hope to 
whatever the future might bring to her. 

VI 

The grief of Gus, and certain hazy religious 
notions he had imbibed from the religious charity 
that had recently relieved his distress, may have 


178 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


been diluted with hypocrisy, but somehow they 
made it easier for Bella to hoodwink herself into 
believing that she was not acting unwisely and 
that there would practically be no risk now in his 
reunion with young Gus. 

Moreover, he had undoubtedly changed in 
various ways. He was quieter; these latter years 
had chastened him and taken the cruel edge from 
his temper, or he had it more under control. 
Possibly, too, he was really anxious to school 
himself to a contrite and engaging disposition 
that should incline young Gus to a first favourable 
impression of him when the hour for their meeting 
arrived. That, at least, was the meaning Bella 
liked to read into his altered demeanour, and there 
seemed no other plausible interpretation of it. 

“We'll go and meet the boy together,” she said 
to herself; “then it won't matter much which of 
us he’d prefer—he can come home with both of us. 
I'm not jealous, so long as I can have him with me. 
And I don’t feel so afraid about Gus as I was. He's 
had a warning and he was always fond of him, and 
will be glad to help me keep the dear fellow straight 
after all that’s happened.” 

She mapped out a blessed future, over her work, 
in which the reformation of Gus senior should con- 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 179 


tinue, and young Gus should rise to proud heights 
of prosperity and respect. 

When the day of his release was only a week 
ahead they both began to grow restless and tensely 
anxious. On the appointed morning they were 
up at daybreak, and Bella, having regained and 
refurnished the other ground-floor room that had 
used to be his, saw that it was in neat and perfect 
order, tidied the living-room, in which she and 
Gus slept, put some flowers she had bought over¬ 
night in a small vase on the mantelpiece, and laid 
an appetising breakfast, which they would not sit 
down to, they decided, till he was there to share it 
with them. 

Gus was wrought to such a pitch of excitement 
during these preparations that he suddenly burst 
into tears and begged Bella to put in a good word 
for him if the boy still nursed any bitterness toward 
him; and his tears so touched her that, being over¬ 
anxious also, she had much ado to restrain herself 
from hysterical weeping. So that when they were 
calmer and went out into the sunny freshness of 
the early morning they were drawn to each other 
by a poignant understanding and sympathy that 
made them more at one than they had been these 


many years. 


180 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


There were several waiting—some rather fur¬ 
tively—in sight of the prison gateway at Penton- 
ville, patient women and men, on similar errands 
to theirs. They took up a position a little apart 
from these others, and waited patiently with 
them. 

At intervals, a narrow door in the great gate 
opened, and a man came out dazedly into the sun¬ 
shine and was received by friends with laughter and 
covert weeping, and departed in their company. 

Presently, the door opened for the fourth time, 
and a young fellow, lean, sullen, indifferent, 
emerged and, scarcely troubling to glance around, 
slouched leisurely off. 

“That’s ’im!” Gus whispered, husky and 
tremulous. “You go an’ speak to ’im, Bella.” 

She was hastening forward already and he 
trailed haltingly in her wake. 

Young Gus caught sight of her with no glimmer 
of pleasure or surprise in his surly visage. Appar¬ 
ently he would have passed her without a word or 
sign of recognition, but she laid a quivering hand 
on his sleeve. 

“Gus, my dear,” she quavered, “we’ve come to 
meet you—me and your father.” 

“Might ’ave saved yerselves the job,” he snarled 


DON JUAN OF HAGGERSTON 181 


ungraciously. “I ain’t cornin’ with you—I’ve 
done with the pair of yer—that’s straight. See?” 

“Oh, but my dear boy,” she sobbed in an 
agony, “we want you—we want to make up to 
you-” 

“Don’t try that game with me!” he laughed 
sourly. “I can take good care o’ meself—an’ I 
mean to. I met a cove inside there was let out last 
week, an’ fixed up to go an’ join ’im. That’s where 
I’m goin’ if you must know. You’d like me to 
come an’ keep you both I dessay—but not me! 
So you can le’ me alone. I ain’t cornin’, see? ” 

“Why, Gus, ole pal,” his father struck in with a 
forlorn and empty affectation of cheerfulness, 
“ain’t yer goin’ to give us yer ’and?” 

Young Gus turned on him with a withering 
blast of profanity. 

“You miserable old blighter—if you wasn’t a 
cripple I’d show you what I’d give yer!” He 
swung round on his mother. “You know what he 
done for me, and you told me you’d chuck him, the 
sneakin’ swine! But you’ve got him still, ’ave yer? 
Well, then, you stick to ’im! I’ve done with ’im, 
damn ’im! ’E don’t make a mug o’ me no more. 
I can play me own games, an’ I’m goin’ to. D’yer 
’ear? Le’ go o’ my arm I tell yer!” 


182 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“Don’t be so hard, Gus,” she pleaded. “Come 
home with us, my dear. He’s bitter sorry-” 

“Be damned to ’im, so ’e ought to be! No, I 
shan’t come. I shan’t come. Le’ go—d’yer ’ear!” 

He grasped her thin wrist, and snatching his 
sleeve from her fingers made a swift rush at a 
passing tram, leaped on the step, and, almost 
before she realised that she had lost him, was 
carried rapidly out of sight. 

She stood gasping and crying out incoherently 
for a minute, then turned in a frenzy; but all the 
anger in her heart died at the sight of the haggard, 
despairing, white face that stared piteously back 
into hers. It was her own misery, her own despair 
that gazed on her from his eyes, and she was 
stricken dumb in the glance of it. There was no 
use in saying anything; there was nothing they 
could do. She had foreseen this; she had brought 
this on herself; and it was too late for repentance 
or reproaches. 

Mechanically she slid her hand under his arm 
and led him away. 

“Oh, my Gord, my Gord!” he whimpered as 
they went. “What are we goin’to do? Whatever 
shall we do? . . . Wasn’t my fault. Why did 
you let ’im go? If I could only run. . . . Why 


DON JUAN OP HAGGERSTON 183 


didn’t yer go after ’im? Oh, my Gord, my Gord. 
. . . Can’t yer speak, woman? I don’t believe 
you care a curse about it! Oh, my Gord, oh, my 
Gord!—I wish I could take it quiet like you do!” 


A SPOILT IDYLL 

“Hul-lo! Excuse me, sir, you are not Mr. 
Hillyer—Mr. Ben Hillyer?” 

“Guess I am, stranger. But you have the 
advantage of me. I don’t seem to recognise-” 

“I’m Tom Watts.” 

“Never! Not old Tom Watts of--eh? But 

now I look at you, great Caesar!—why, of course it 
is. Lordy, put it there!” 

The traveller dropped his portmanteau and held 
out a sinewy brown paw, which the other grasped 
heartily. 

“ I only landed at Liverpool this morning,” cried 
Mr. Ben Hillyer, “and here if old Tom Watts isn’t 
waiting to meet me at Euston as if he’d known I 
was coming!” 

“Thought it was you. I knew you the moment 
I set eyes on you,” declared Tom, laughing. “If 
I’d known you were coming I should have been here 
to meet you—you can bet your bottom dollar on 
184 




A SPOILT IDYLL 


185 


that, as you Yankees say, for I suppose ten years 
of it makes you one of them. And, now I have met 
you, I shall stop for a chat, and miss my train and 
go on by the next. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t 
waiting for anybody. I’m on my way to Man¬ 
chester. Been living there these last three years. 
Eh? . . . What a row that engine makes! Oh, 
yes! Capital appointment in Manchester. Had 
to be something good that could tempt me to 
quit little old London, I can tell you. Been doing 
a fortnight’s holiday. . . . Come in here out of 
the crowd.” 

“Well,” Mr. Hillyer resumed, when they were 
seated in the refreshment room on the platform, 
“I’ve been coming home for long enough past, but 
something or other always turned up to hinder me. 
I’ve had to write half a dozen times to postpone the 
visit after I’d fixed a day for coming. And, at last, 
now I’ve come, I’ve come in such a rush I’ve never 
even written to tell anybody I was on the way.” 

“Take ’em by surprise, eh? And how have you 
been doing out there? You’re looking wonderfully 
well, and not a day older than when you went 
away. Come alone?” 

“That’s so.” 

“No Mrs. Hillyer yet, then?” 


186 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


Mr. Ben Hillyer shook his head, with a quiet 
smile. And, after regarding him curiously for a 
minute, Tom Watts broke into a chuckle, smacked 
his kneepan resoundingly and, glancing round to 
make sure nobody was likely to overhear him, he 
went on in subdued tones. 

“I’d forgotten. Why, what did you go out for? 
To be sure! And who is there in the old country 
you’d come over to see, if it isn’t her? Of course!” 

Mr. Ben Hillyer did not dispute the proposition. 

“Ten years!” ejaculated Tom Watts. “Mean to 
say neither of you have changed your minds in all 
that time? My gracious, if it doesn’t beat fairy 
tales! Young man—young girl—poverty—all the 
good old-fashioned ingredients—young man goes 
to—Boston, was it?—to make his fortune—young 
girl waits. . . . How is the fortune, Ben? Made?” 

“The foundation’s laid, and the scaffolding’s 
up,” laughed Mr. Ben Hillyer, “and there’s enough 
of it built to keep the rain out. Yes; I’ve done very 
fairly, Tom. Got a solid business out there. When 
my old boss died two years ago I arranged to take 
over the whole concern and run it myself. I run 
it still in the old man’s name. In fact, I’ve pretty 
well dropped my own. Only use it when I write 
letters home—-and I’ve never written to anybody 


A SPOILT IDYLL 


187 


but her; and of course she uses it when she writes 
to me. That’s all.” 

“Then you’ve not come over for good?” 

“I calculate not.” 

“Making a flying visit to finish up the fairy 
tale—that’s it, eh? Ten years! I never believed 
that sort of thing when I read of it in books, but 
when it comes out of the books and sits down and 
tells you about it—I give in! I never was a roman¬ 
tic fellow myself.” 

There was nothing about Mr. Ben Hillyer’s 
appearance to indicate that he was romantic either. 
He was perhaps half-way through the thirties, and 
looked his age; his eyes were keen and grey, his 
bronzed, good-humoured face slightly bearded, his 
whole aspect as ordinary as it possibly could be. 

“Did you ever see her?” he asked. 

“No. You used to tell me of her; but I don’t 
even recollect her name.” 

“What do you think of that?’ 

Mr. Ben Hillyer drew a somewhat faded portrait 
from his pocket and passed it to his friend. It was 
the picture of a young girl of eighteen, a graceful, 
dainty figure, posed against a dark background 
that made the face look pale. There was a tender¬ 
ness in the sweet, half-smiling features, a shy 


188 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


wistfulness in the large, clear eyes that instantly 
won the liking of the beholder as well as his 
admiration. 

“If she’s as good as she looks—and I’m sure she 
is,” said Tom Watts emphatically, “no wonder you 
waited ten years for her.” 

“I don’t believe there’s a finer, truer girl on 
earth,” returned Mr. Hillyer, not without some 
touch of emotion. “She’s no doll, my boy. When 
that girl’s mother died—her father was dead before 
I knew her—she took her place in the shop and 
she’s kept it going for the last five years, and sup¬ 
ports herself and two younger sisters, with no 
help from any living soul. That’s the kind of girl 
she is. All the same, if you’d read her letters you’d 
know she’s still got as much romance in her as I 
have—if you call it romance.” 

“She deserves to be happy—and she will,” said 
Tom Watts, returning the photograph. “Drop me 
a line and ask me, and I’ll get a day off and come 
to the wedding. And, if you want a best man, and 
don’t know the address of a better one—there’s my 
card.” 

Having left his luggage at an hotel near the 
station, Mr. Ben Hillyer went as fast as a taxi 
could carry him to the eastern end of the town. 


A SPOILT IDYLL 


189 


Halfway along the Commercial Road he dismissed 
the cab and, walking a couple of hundred yards, 
paused before an ancient, low-browed coffee¬ 
house, dingy and dull externally and exhibiting 
in its windows two pale chops and a steak on a 
small plate with an edging of tomatoes, a selection 
of eggs, a piece of bacon, a stack of tea-cakes, a 
framed price list, and some theatre bills. 

There was a shabby, inferior air about the shop 
that gave him a curious shock and rather damped 
his ardour; he marvelled he had never been struck 
by the meanness of its appearance when he was 
so familiar with it, years ago. 

He entered with an indefinable reluctance. 
Within, the shop was close and dark, and filled 
with unappetising odours of miscellaneous cooking. 
It was long and narrow, with gloomy, high-backed 
boxes on either side for the accommodation of 
customers, and, at the end, a low counter, behind 
which was a secluded space where the frying and 
boiling and washing-up were done. Piles of plates 
and dishes, cups and saucers stood on a long dresser, 
and similar articles adorned the wooden rack above 
it; while from an end of this recess that was out of 
sight a thick steam floated and hung in an attenu¬ 
ated cloud all across the ceiling. 


190 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


Hesitating, overcome by an unaccountable ner¬ 
vousness, Mr. Ben Hillyer stepped aside into one of 
the boxes, instead of going, as he had intended, to 
the counter, and when the frowzy waitress came to 
attend upon him he ordered a cup of tea. 

From where he sat he could keep watch on part 
of the area behind the counter. An ancient female 
there was washing crockery in a tub, and the 
frowzy waitress drawing his tea from an urn. 
From the invisible depths, whence the steam 
floated, arose a high-pitched, feminine voice, 
monotonously scolding somebody in connection 
with a disaster to some baking operations. 

All the while he was sipping his tea that scold¬ 
ing continued, the fretful, complaining, intolerant 
tones grating on his nerves like snarlings of a hand¬ 
saw. He was yearning for a glimpse of that face 
whose picture had been his companion and consoler 
through the tedious years of his absence. He had 
looked forward to this day longingly and with 
extravagant anticipations; in sleeping and in 
waking dreams he had lived through this hour, 
through this meeting now so near, more often than 
he could have told; and if, so far, the reality did not 
fully justify those dreams—surely the actual seeing 
her, touching her hand, hearing her speak, must 


A SPOILT IDYLL 


191 


make amends and surpass all imaginary rap¬ 
tures. 

His thoughts were broken in upon by the frowzy 
waitress saying to a man in the next box: 

“ Yes, in one of her usual tantrums. Fair sicken¬ 
ing, it is! Been at it like this all day, very near.” 

“Kate!” 

It was the complaining voice raised to a higher 
pitch; and, answering the call, the waitress scuttled 
off, vanished round the counter, and could be heard 
out of sight involved in rebuke and heated 
argument. 

She reappeared later, subdued and sullen, and 
presently the owner of the voice that had scolded 
her became visible at the counter, where she pro¬ 
ceeded to make fresh tea in the urn. 

At his first glimpse of her face, Mr. Ben Hillyer 
started, a peculiar choking sensation constricted 
his throat, and he shrank back as if he feared she 
might observe him. She was a stoutish, full-faced 
young woman, with an anxious, harassed, dis¬ 
contented expression; a large coarse apron con¬ 
cealed most of her faded print dress, and the sleeves 
were rolled up above the elbows of her red, rough 
arms. To a stranger, the resemblance between this 
buxom, rather slatternly female and the photo- 


192 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


graph in Mr. Hillyer’s pocket might have been 
imperceptible, but to Mr. Ben Hillyer himself it 
was at once and devastatingly apparent. He could 
even trace something vaguely familiar, now, in the 
altered voice; yet he made a desperate effort to 
think he was mistaken—that this assertive, prac¬ 
tical termagant and the shy, tender, sympathetic 
girl he had loved could not possibly be one and the 
same person. 

The ideal he had cherished during all these years 
was not to be instantly removed from its shrine 
and replaced by such a reality. Of course, he knew 
ten years were bound to have changed her; he had 
come, nevertheless, expecting to find the grace and 
beauty and sweetness of the past merely matured; 
and had found- 

The disillusion stunned him. He was in no 
mood just then to remember how constant she had 
been; how nobly she had faced the sordid business 
of life when she and her sisters had been left alone 
in the world, or how impossible it was for any 
delicate nature to engage in such stern combat 
without becoming hardened, coarsened, perhaps 
embittered. Nothing of these changes had re¬ 
vealed itself in her letters, and he felt it the more 
keenly because he had been wholly unprepared to 


A SPOILT IDYLL 


193 


find any great difference in her. He realised only 
that he had been deluding himself with vain fancies, 
that the woman he loved and had come so far to 
meet no longer existed. 

The whole experience seemed so crushingly un¬ 
real that, with a forlorn idea of assuring himself of 
its certainty, he remarked to the waitress as he was 
paying her for his tea: 

“Miss Walton seems—that is Miss Walton, 
isn’t it?” 

The girl nodded sulkily. 

“The eldest?” 

“ Yes. The others don’t live here now. Couldn’t 
stand her.” 

“Oh? She seems rather put out.” 

“She’s never anything else,” snapped the girl. 

And as she evinced no disposition to prolong 
the conversation, and his dread that the woman 
might see and recognise him suddenly renewed 
itself, he rose hurriedly, and passed into the street. 

He was dejected and miserable; but, the more 
he thought of it, the surer he was that he had acted 
well in coming away without making himself 
known. He might have concealed his true feelings 
from her and forced himself to redeem his promises, 
but was it likely such self-sacrifice could tend, in 


194 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


the circumstances, either to her happiness or to 
his? He knew in his heart it was not. It would 
have been brutal to have faced her and told her of 
his disenchantment; he could not bring himself to 
write and tell her; yet, after what had happened, 
he could write to her no more as he had used to. 

He was seized with a craving to get back to his 
work; to put the sea betwixt him and this piteous 
catastrophe; he saw no hope for either of them 
except in forgetfulness. 

And on the voyage home a way occurred to him 
in which he might remove himself from her life and 
leave her free to lose all remembrance of him. The 
contemplation of such a subterfuge could not be 
other than repugnant to him, but he could think of 
no alternative, and argued that, all things con¬ 
sidered, the deceit was justified. Already the girl 
he loved was dead to him; it remained for him to 
die to her. 

Late one evening, less than a month after he had 
so come and gone, the postman walked down the 
coffee-shop in Commercial Road and left on the 
counter a newspaper addressed to Miss Walton. 

It was handed to her as she sat by the fire-place 
busied over accounts, and, seeing by the stamp that 


A SPOILT IDYLL 


195 


it was from America, she opened it at once. She 
opened it with a strange sense of apprehension, 
for she had been expecting a letter which was a 
month overdue, and the paper was addressed in 
handwriting with which she was not acquainted. 
Turning over the pages, she came at length to a 
marked paragraph in the list of deaths, which ran: 

“Hillyer.—May 10th, at 98 Kirstall Avenue, 
Boston, Benjamin Hillyer, formerly of London, 
England.” 

Nothing more. She read it three or four times 
before its full purport took hold upon her, and she 
understood he had been dead nearly three weeks. 
Then—for a habit of reticence about her private 
affairs had increased upon her, and she shrank from 
the thought of humiliating herself by a show of 
weakness before her dependants—she put the paper 
aside indifferently and made a pretence of going 
on with her accounts, till, finding it too hard to 
maintain such unnatural self-control, she rose 
abruptly and went upstairs. 

The cook and the frowzy waitress, whose 
curiosity had been stirred by her demeanour, took 
advantage of her retirement to open the paper and 
read the marked passage; so that when, after a 


196 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


while, Miss Walton came down again, they affected 
to be unconscious of the redness round her eyes 
and the unaccustomed quietness of her manner; 
they involuntarily spoke to her with a new respect, 
obeying her wishes with a promptitude that was 
alien to them, much as one humours and seeks to 
anticipate the whims of an invalid. 

Next week brought a typewritten letter from an 
unknown Edward Smith, of Boston. He enclosed 
a bank-draft, for a thousand pounds, saying it 
represented the savings of the late Mr. Ben Hillyer, 
who had desired that she should have them. He 
mentioned that he had forwarded a newspaper 
containing a formal notice of his friend’s death, 
which had been very sudden, and concluded his 
communication with orthodox expressions of 
regret. 

Only her few immediate friends know why Miss 
Walton wears the mourning she has worn so long, 
and not all of them know who erected, in the dis¬ 
mal East London cemetery, a marble cross to the 
memory of “Benjamin Hillyer, who died at Boston, 
aged thirty-nine,” nor whose name is one day to 
fill the space that is vacant under his. 


THE FUGITIVE 

“ Who’s that? What are you doing here? ” 

There was a strip of garden in front of the flats; 
something moving in the shadow of the privet 
hedge by the railings caught John Greville’s eye as 
he closed his umbrella at the entrance before going 
in, and he went back to see what it was. 

At the sound of his voice it had become motion¬ 
less—something that cowered closely between the 
hedge and the wall and, blurred by the misty rain 
and the darkness of the early autumn night, 
might have been either a lurking animal or merely 
a bundle of some sort that had been hidden there. 

“Come out of that! What are you doing 
here?” 

John prodded enquiringly with his umbrella and, 
as he reiterated his question, was aware of a scared, 
white face peering piteously up at him. 

‘ 4 It’s all right, ” came a husky whisper. “ I’m all 
right. I’m not doing any harm.” 

“What are you after, then? If it’s the rain 
197 


198 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


you’re sheltering from you’d be better off in the 
door-way.” 

“It’s all right. Not so loud, sir.” The man had 
risen, a wet, shivering, miserable object, and stood 
before him in an attitude of abject appeal. “For 
God’s sake, don’t give me away! Let me pass, and 
I’ll go.” 

“ Give you away? What do you mean? ” 

“Well, I know I’d no business to be in here.” 

The poor wretch’s mouth was grotesquely agi¬ 
tated and tears were trickling down his cheeks. 
“I’ve had no food since yesterday, and I’m a bit 
queer—a bit weak, I suppose.” All the while he 
was glancing aside between the railings, in a fur¬ 
tive, apprehensive manner. “I only came inside 
here for a rest—that’s all. I was feeling too done 
up to walk a step further.” 

The air and tone of the man, his haggard, 
anxious looks, the nervous restlessness of his hands 
were so full of anxiety and dejection that John 
was touched with compassion for him. 

“What’s the trouble? Come up into my place,” 
he said shortly. “You’re soaking, and this rain 
will get worse before it’s done. I can give you a 
meal anyhow. Come on. You needn’t be afraid; 
I’m all alone here. I don’t know what you’ve 


THE FUGITIVE 


190 


been doing, and don’t care—that’s no affair of 
mine; but you’ll be safer up in my den than you 
are down here, that’s a sure thing.” 

For a moment the man hesitated; he threw an 
irresolute glance again along the deserted street, as 
if he had thoughts of dashing out and running 
away; then, as John plucked at his sleeve and re¬ 
peated his invitation, he yielded resignedly, and 
they went in together. 

There was no lift in the building. They climbed 
the stone stairway to the top floor, where John 
opened his compact bachelor flat with a latch-key, 
and switched on the electric light. 

Within a few minutes he had cooked a meal of 
eggs and bacon on his gas stove, and sat smoking 
and looking ruminatively on from the other side of 
the kitchen table whilst the stranger fed himself 
with a ravenous abandon. 

“Rather rough and ready,” John remarked 
apologetically, “but I keep no servant and, as a 
rule, get all my meals out, except breakfast. I 
flatter myself, though, I am a fairly good cook at a 
pinch.” 

The stranger nodded appreciatively. 

“I tried living in furnished apartments and 
hotels, but it didn’t suit me—not my style,” John 


200 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


continued, sociably making conversation. “I hate 
rules and regulations, can’t bear to be tied to time, 
so I prefer a flat of my own, which may have dis¬ 
advantages, but leaves me to be as free and easy 
as I choose. I’m that kind of chap.” 

The stranger nodded again and, refilling his glass 
for him, John added, with a ready sympathy: 

“Things may have been free enough with you 
lately, but you don’t look as if they’d been par¬ 
ticularly easy. Eh? What’s the trouble?” 

The other eyed him with a flickering uncertainty; 
the grateful warmth of the room, the food and the 
beer seemed to have melted him, to have loosened 
his tongue, to have unsealed within him tremulous 
yearnings towards confidential talk. 

“I’m in an awful mess—a hell of a mess. If you 
knew the truth about me,” his voice quivered, his 
eyes were blurred with tears of self-pity, “you’d 
turn me out—if you didn’t lock me in while you 
went for the police.” 

“I’m not a cad,” said John quietly. “Besides, 
you don’t look like a man who can have done any¬ 
thing uncommonly bad. Whatever it is, don’t 
worry so far as I am concerned—I always leave the 
police to do their own dirty work. Still—don’t tell 
me more than you feel I can be trusted with.” 


THE FUGITIVE 


201 


He laughed, and leaned back, thoughtfully re¬ 
garding the man through the smoke from his 
briar. 

There certainly was nothing in his appearance to 
suggest that he was at all a desperate character: 
nervous, slightly built, delicate looking and, like 
John himself, still on the better side of thirty, he 
had a simple, native frankness of expression that 
even the watchful fear in his eyes could only par¬ 
tially obscure. He was well dressed, if you made 
allowance for the draggled appearance the rain 
had given him; and his speech and bearing were, 
at least, those of a man of education. 

“You will think me a maudlin kind of fool—but 
I can't help it," he said brokenly. “I have been 
wandering about hiding these last four days, and 
gone absolutely hungry since yesterday, and I'm 
weak and not myself, you know." He paused to 
subdue his agitation. “I was on my way home 
just now, to see my wife, and then I meant—I can’t 
stand it any longer—I meant to go and confess and 
let the police take me." 

“What’s it all about?" queried John, with 
gathering interest. ‘‘ Money ?'’ 

“Well, in a way—partly. But worse than that 
it's-" The word choked him, and he stopped, 



202 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


and began again. “You read the papers? ... I 
am Richard Murdock.” 

John started, and stared at him aghast. 

“Good Lord!” he ejaculated; and when he had 
somewhat recovered himself: “Of course, the 
papers have been full of you. I have read all about 
it, and—oh, well, so far as I can make out, there 
were excuses for you—nearly everybody thinks so 
—and the other fellow damn well deserved what 
he got.” 

“Thank you,” Murdock faltered huskily. “But 
I’m afraid the law won’t say that.” 

“Afraid not,” John agreed. 

A silence fell between them; and, by and by, 
having made an end of his meal, Murdock sombrely 
resumed: 

“ I must have been mad. If I was, it was he that 
drove me mad. You’ve read how it all happened. 
But you don’t get quite everything in the papers. 
... I was married to the dearest girl in the 
world, and we were happy enough, though we were 
beggarly poor. Then, three years ago, my uncle, 
my mother’s brother, died and left me a fortune, 
and his share in a great business, on condition 
that I adopted his name. I knew nothing of the 
business—didn’t understand it, and was glad to 


THE FUGITIVE 


203 


leave the whole management of it in the hands of 
my uncle’s partner, and he robbed me, as it turned 
out he had been robbing my uncle. I never 
doubted him, till it was too late, and he did what 
he liked with me. He induced me to invest pretty 
well all I had in the business—said he was anxious 
to extend it, and it would soon be yielding me 
double my previous income. Then the crash 
came, and, when the creditors were satisfied, I was 
ruined—as poor as I had ever been—but he still 
had plenty ... in some underhand fashion he 
had taken care of himself. That was hard enough 
but I could have faced that. It was what my wife 
told me—had to tell me. . . . She told me how 
that blackguard had pestered her with attentions— 
things he had dared to say to her last year, when 
she had ordered him out of the house but, for the 
sake of peace, felt it was wiser not to mention it to 
me. And now, in my absence, he had come to her 
again—thought he could take advantage of our 
poverty—thought that would make a difference to 
her—and I found her crying, and she had to tell 
me. Without letting her know, I took my revolver 
and went round to him that night. . . . But I’ve 
gone over and over it whilst I have been wandering 
about the streets—and I’m not sorry I did it— 


204 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


I should do it again—You’ve read what happened 
and you don’t blame me?” 

“It’s what I should have done myself,” said 
John emphatically, “in your place.” 

“And you’re not going to give me up?” 

“What do you think?” 

“ No. I feel I can trust you—you have been very 
kind. . . . But I meant to go to the station and 
let them have me, only I wanted to see my wife 
again first. I was on my way to her, and as I was 
passing here a policeman turned in at the end of 
the road, and I’m so horribly unnerved that, before 
I knew what I was doing, I had dodged in at the 
gateway and was hiding in your garden. I’ll go 
on and see her now, then I’ll throw up the sponge 
and they can do what they choose with me. They 
are bound to get me sooner or later, anyhow. I 
have no money on me, and can’t bear the suspense 
and the misery—anything’s better than that.” 

“Don’t be a fool! Wait awhile,” said John 
sharply, motioning him to sit down again. “I am 
not a very sentimental person, but, to tell you the 
truth, when I read this case of yours, I sympathised 
with you immensely, and hoped with all my heart 
you would slip safely out of the country. If it isn’t 
a hanging job—and I’m not sure that it isn’t—it 


THE FUGITIVE 


205 


will mean a life sentence, and—well, look here! if I 
can help you to escape I will.” 

He was a young man of strong and generous 
impulses and accustomed to acting on them; and 
something in the gentle helplessness and wistful 
simplicity of his visitor’s attitude of mind appealed 
to him. 

“Really?” exclaimed Murdock, eager and half- 
incredulous. “You are the best—the kindest-” 

“Never mind that,” John interrupted. “Have 
you any children?” 

“None.” 

“That simplifies matters. If your wife could 
join you secretly”—John planned the escape 
hurriedly whilst he was speaking—“if we could 
lead the police to believe she was still at home, the 
two of you might nip out of the country with less 
likelihood of detection than if you travelled alone.” 

“But how could that be done?” 

Murdock shook his head doubtfully. 

This idea of saving the fugitive from his pursuers, 
however, had taken hold of John. His sympathies 
were roused; and there was a spice of adventure 
in the undertaking that stimulated and excited 
him. The other’s hesitation only made him the 
more obstinate in his resolution; he was used to 


206 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


having his own way, and always, when opposed, 
was the more determined to have it. The mere 
outlining of his scheme in words and filling in some 
of the details, fixed him unshakably in his desire 
to see it successfully carried out. 

“It can be done, I tell you,” he insisted, “and if 
you and your wife get away abroad—anywhere— 
nobody need know who you are, and you can start 
afresh and forget that all this ever happened. All 
it wants is a little pluck and a little money. Has 
your wife any money?” 

“She has relatives who could find some for her,” 
said Murdock, beginning to be infected with his 
host’s optimism, “and they would be ready to save 
us and themselves from this disgrace.” 

“I can weigh in with a trifle myself if necessary,” 
cried John. “ Give me her address. Write a note 
to her and I’ll take it.” 

“Wouldn’t it be better for me to go-” 

“Do you imagine they are not watching your 
house? If you go they will collar you before you 
can open the door.” 

“I expect they would, when you come to think 
of it. . . . But they might follow you back.” 

“I’ll see that they don’t. I sometimes hire a car 
from the garage of a fellow I know round here— 



THE FUGITIVE 


207 


I’ll ride there in that, and I’ll take jolly good care 
they don’t follow me when I come away. Leave 
that to me. You write the letter—as quick as you 
like. You could stop here safely for a week, if we 
can’t arrange things sooner—they wouldn’t dream 
of looking here for you. How could they? You 
write the letter—just tell her what we are up to, 
and, once we know about money matters and when 
she can be ready, and whether she is sure she can 
dodge out and join you without the police knowing 
she has left the house, we’ll soon arrange every¬ 
thing else.” 

In the flush of this headlong, irresponsible en¬ 
thusiasm, with the sense of risk and chivalrous 
championship exhilarating and sustaining him, 
John hastened out to hire the car, and within 
twenty minutes was knocking at Mrs. Murdock’s 
door. 

The maid who opened it was reticent and sub¬ 
dued. She was not certain whether her mistress 
could see him; asked the nature of his business, 
and whether he was a newspaper reporter; and 
finally shut him outside whilst she reluctantly 
carried in his card. 

She returned almost immediately, and this time 
ushered him into the drawing-room without demur. 


208 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


He looked at the pallid, beautiful face of the 
woman who came forward to greet him, and, for 
the moment, could not believe his eyes. She held 
out her hand, as if she took for granted he had 
come expecting to see her, but he could only stare 
at her in speechless amazement. 

His blank surprise, his strangeness, rebuffed her. 
She dropped her unnoticed hand and said doubt¬ 
fully: 

“ You wished to see me, Mr. Greville?” 

“Maggie!” he gasped; then, seeing his own 
bewilderment reflected in her gaze, he went on 
confusedly, “I was not expecting to see you. I did 
not know—I thought your husband’s name was 
— Of course,” he corrected himself, remember¬ 
ing, “he told me he had changed his name when 
he came into his fortune—but I never dreamt 
—it never occurred to me that you were his 
wife.” 

“Have you come from my husband?” she asked 
in an excited whisper. 

“From Richard Murdock—yes,” he replied ab¬ 
sently, for he was still absorbed in a blind chaos of 
thought and emotion. 

“Where is he? Is he safe? Can I go to him? 
Oh! They haven’t—they haven’t found him?” 


THE FUGITIVE 


209 


“He is quite safe,” said John. “He is at my 
flat.” 

Then, recollecting the letter, he drew it from his 
pocket and gave it to her. 

A curious constraint had come upon him; his 
enthusiasm had burnt itself out, and his mouth was 
dry as with the ashes of it; he was depressed, dis¬ 
traught, vaguely resentful. The sight of her tears 
and her agitation as she read the letter stirred no 
pity in him, and when she looked up, tremblingly, 
and would have thanked him, he checked her with 
something of irritation. 

“I had no idea he was your husband. He came 
to me by chance—a stranger,” he said, “and I 
offered to bring his letter to you.” 

“He says he is in hiding at your flat—where is 
that?” 

He told her, and she resumed anxiously: 

“It is very good of you, John. He says you will 
arrange-” 

“If I can—I don’t know that I can,” he inter¬ 
rupted her tetchily, and resented her seeming 
assurance of his friendliness. “I simply came to 
let you know where he was and see if his friends 
would find enough money-” 

“ They have,” she broke in. “ I have money here 



210 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


ready to help him, and have been waiting till I 
could hear where he was. Will you take me to 
him? Can I go back with you now? ” 

“That would never do,” he declared sharply. 
“This house is watched, and if you leave it with 
me we shall be followed, and—” He shrugged his 
shoulders significantly. “We shall have to be 
cautious. We must have time to think. You have 
the money—that is the great thing, and, if you will 
be ready at a moment’s notice, I will let you know 
as soon as possible when and where you can 
join your husband, and what plan he decides 
upon.” 

This disquieting, unexpected meeting with her 
had so shaken him that he hardly knew what he 
said; he was talking more or less at random. He 
fluctuated between a renascence of his old anger 
which meanly prompted him to reproach her with 
this sorrow she had brought upon herself by her 
unfaithfulness to him and a dull rage against the 
man who had broken her heart and her pride. He 
wanted to escape from her presence before he 
betrayed these feelings that were rioting within 
him—to escape from her and think of what he was 
doing in the light of the knowledge that flashed 
upon him when he entered and found that the 


THE FUGITIVE 


211 


man he was protecting, and that man’s wife, were 
those who had embittered his life and done him a 
wrong he had once sworn never to forgive. 

She questioned him closely, as if his reticence 
dimly alarmed her or she were fretted with an 
instinctive distrust of him; but he firmly dissuaded 
her from any intention she had of accompanying 
him, promised he would contrive to send a message 
to her in the morning, and was glad to be out of the 
house, driving off through the dark streets, free to 
surrender himself wholly to the whirl of sinister 
imaginings that were clouding his mind and subtly 
overmastering all but his deep sense of personal 
wrong and a shameful rankling desire to re¬ 
taliate. 

He did not at once head the car for home; he 
wanted time to think. He had turned the corner 
in the opposite direction when a motor-bicycle 
dashed past him; when it was well ahead of him it 
stopped abruptly, the rider sprang off, and, stand¬ 
ing directly in his path, signalled him imperatively 
to stop. Wondering and irresolute, he slowed down 
and obeyed. In an instant the cyclist was on the 
step of his car. 

“You have just come from the house of Richard 
Murdock,” he said. “ Who are you? I am a police 


212 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


officer. Do you know anything of his where¬ 
abouts?” 

“What if I do? ” John answered sullenly, without 
pausing to reflect, and blaming and justifying him¬ 
self instantly with a thought that they had got 
him, and would, anyhow, take care to go with him 
and find where he lived and satisfy themselves 
about him. 

“You know he is wanted. Where is he?” 

John remained silent. 

“You must come with me to the station,” said 
the officer sternly. “There it is, where the lamp 
is, a little along the road.” 

“It’s nothing to do with me,” John began. 

“Drive slowly, and I’ll come alongside,” snapped 
the other. “If you try any tricks it’ll be the worse 
for you. I’ve got your number.” 

There seemed no help for it; John assured himself 
that Fate had been too much for him and this 
catastrophe was no fault of his. 

He moved forward slowly, the officer keeping 
pace with him, and at the station pulled up and 
got out. 

The officer followed him up the steps into the 
office and closed the door. 

“I saw this man leave Murdock’s house a 


THE FUGITIVE 


213 


minute ago,” he said to an elderly inspector who 
was seated at a desk, “and he admits he knows 
where Murdock is.” 

“Is that so?” the inspector demanded. 

“I did not know who he was when he came to 
me,” said John, thinking rapidly and still uncertain 
of himself and the course he should take. “I was 
sent to his house with a message from him and— 
and when I discovered who he was I meant to—I 
was on my way round here to give information.” 

“Where is he?” 

“Waiting at my flat.” 

“Where’s that?” 

John felt there was nothing for it but to tell 
them, and he briefly explained how Murdock had 
fallen into his hands. 

“Wait a moment,” said the inspector, and he 
pressed a bell. 

A constable came promptly from an inner room. 

“Tell Jenkins and Evans I want them.” 

The constable withdrew, and a junior inspector 
immediately arrived with a plain-clothes detective 
in his wake. 

“Go with this gentleman, Jenkins—take Evans 
and Watts with you—Murdock is at his flat. You 
have got the warrant.” 


214 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“Yes, sir.” Jenkins turned to John Greville. 
“Is he armed? Is he likely to be dangerous? ” 

“I think not. I know very little of him. He is 
no friend of mine,” said John. “I never set eyes on 
him till a couple of hours ago. But he seems harm¬ 
less enough.” 

It was not until he was in the car with the in¬ 
spector and the two other officers that he fully 
realised the enormity of what he was doing—that 
he was playing Judas to a man who had trusted 
him. He tried to justify himself with arguments 
that he had no choice; the position had been im¬ 
posed upon him; his hand had been forced by 
circumstances he could not control. But behind 
these sophistries was the knowledge that he had 
trifled with a sinister thought of betrayal, though 
he was confident he would never have acted on it. 
He was horrified and perplexed as with hazy 
memories of things he had done, or fancied he had 
done, in some outbreak of delirium. Now he was 
sane and calm again, and marvelled that even the 
thought of such baseness as he was stooping to 
should have been possible to him. He was haunted 
by a vision of Maggie’s piteous face and her tears 
when she spoke of this man she loved whom he was 
helping to entrap. But what could he do now? 


THE FUGITIVE 


215 


He had gone too far, said too much to have any 
hope but to keep her in ignorance of his treachery. 

“He must not know I have put you on to him,” he 
impressed upon the Inspector, who sat beside him 
as he drove. “You and your men can wait at the 
foot of the stairs, and I will go up and tell him the 
way is clear, and that he can safely slip around at 
once and see his wife. Then you can drop on him 
as he comes down.” 

“Don’t want to have any blundering,” the 
inspector demurred. “How can I be certain of 
knowing him?” 

“When he comes out I’ll slam my door loud 
enough for you to hear,” said John. “There’s no 
lift, and only one staircase, and you’ll hear his 
footsteps all the way down. There can’t be any 
mistake. It will be pleasanter for me, and better 
for yourself—you can keep me right out of it, and 
take all the credit for the capture. Here we are.” 

Having satisfied himself that there was no lift 
and no second staircase, the inspector accommo¬ 
dated himself to John’s suggestion. He posted his 
two men by the wide entry, and took the precau¬ 
tion of following John up to the second floor, and 
there waited. 

It was now past eleven; the place was as quiet as 


216 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


if all its tenants were already abed; and, listening, 
he heard John, two floors above, let himself in with 
his latch-key. Then came a minute or two of 
silence; he was uneasy, doubting the wisdom of the 
course he was taking, and had climbed a floor 
higher, when suddenly an upper door slammed, 
and there was a hurry of feet on the stone stairs. 

The inspector ran nimbly, quietly down, gave a 
word of warning to his men, and stood a few yards 
beyond them in the centre of the pathway. The 
steps on the stairs grew rapidly louder; they 
crouched back alertly, and springing forward to 
grasping the flying figure that emerged—it was 
John himself who burst upon them, breathless and 
excited. 

“Gone!” he ejaculated. 

“Gone?” echoed the inspector, incredulous and 
suspicious. “What do you mean? You said he 
was here.” 

“So he was,” John rapped out an oath. “He 
was to stay here while I took a note to his wife. I 
expect he must have had doubts about me—fool 
that I was!—and wouldn’t risk waiting—guessed 
I should bring you with me. . . . But we are 
losing time. He would have gone to his wife 
instead of me, if I had not said I would take his 


THE FUGITIVE 


217 


message that he was safe here. It’s a hundred to 
one he has gone there now, and if we go straight 
back we may be in time.” 

The inspector was fiercely chagrined, but every 
moment was precious. 

“Give my men the key of your flat,” he said, 
adding to them, when they had it, “Go up and 
search the place and stay there for me.” 

And he and John scrambled into the car and 
were off again in a twinkling. 

Why he had proposed this course John did not 
know; it was the first idea that occurred to him in 
his bewilderment, and he could not believe Mur¬ 
dock had been such a fool as to go home, but he 
had to say and do something or he would be sus¬ 
pected of complicity in his escape. Yet there was 
no knowing—the man was half out of his senses 
with terror and misery: suppose he had been seized 
with a panic-stricken distrust of John and gone 
recklessly to see his wife, as he had said he 
would?- 

At Mrs. Murdock’s house the startled servant 
came to the door and told them her mistress was 
out. She had not seen or heard her go; could not 
say when she went, but was positive she had gone; 
and, as she was alarmed at this strange disappear- 


218 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


ance and was only too thankful to have them go 
in and search the house, the inspector had soon 
convinced himself that she had spoken the truth. 

He was completely at a loss. He left John in the 
car while he went to consult certain furtive, 
shadowy sleuths, who were on duty watching the 
premises, and came back with reports from them 
that Murdock had not called, and Mrs. Murdock 
had not been seen to quit the house that day. 

“She was undoubtedly here when I called/’ 
stammered John, “just before I came on to you.” 

“Drive back to your hat as hard as you can go, 
Mr. Greville,” said the inspector shortly. 

“He’s not there-” 

“ My men may have found something. Quick as 
you like.” 

They lost no time on the road, and when they 
got back found the two officers waiting for them 
with the outer door open. 

“Nothing here,” said one of them. “No sign 
of him. We’ve searched everywhere.” 

But the inspector preferred to search for himself. 
He glanced round the lobby, as if hoping some clue 
might have been dropped; examined each of the 
rooms, peering under the bed and into cupboards 
and behind curtains, all to no purpose. 



THE FUGITIVE 


219 


“Strange!” he exclaimed. “What time was it 
when you last saw him here?” 

“Less than half an hour before I first saw you.” 
John repeated again how he had discovered Mur¬ 
dock in the garden, and out of pity, because the 
poor wretch was wet and hungry, and not guessing 
who he was, had brought him in to give him a 
meal; and how later Murdock had revealed his 
identity and begged him to take a note to his wife. 
“It was awkward, but I promised to take it— 
what else could I do? And then I was coming to 
you when your man stopped me.” 

“What was the letter about?” 

“Merely to let her know he was safe, and to say 
he wanted to see her, and then he would give himself 
up, as he felt it was impossible for him to get away.” 

“Why didn’t you bring that note to us?” 

“Oh, well, I was bound to keep my promise to 
the poor devil,” said John, “and I saw no harm in 
letting his wife have it.” 

The inspector was grimly displeased; he asked 
many shrewd and some futile questions, made full 
notes in his pocket-book and, declining an offer of 
refreshments, departed with his myrmidons, and, 
with a sigh of relief, John bolted himself in for 
the night. 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


220 

Then he walked back into the kitchen and stood 
with his hands in his pockets, thinking. He had 
been near to being guilty that night of the meanest, 
basest act he had ever stooped to; he had thought 
of it, but could not believe he would really have 
done it, and could not feel sure that he could place 
to his credit the fact that it remained undone. 
Just now, when he was going through the flat 
with the inspector, he had noticed, on the pegs in 
his bedroom cupboard, a suit that did not belong 
to him, and that a suit of his own was missing, 
but he had not called attention to this. Perhaps 
because he really had no desire to put his pursuers 
on the track of the fugitive, perhaps because he 
was anxious to shield himself from all appearance 
of complicity in his flight, or perhaps merely 
because he was too startled, for the moment, to 
make up his mind what to do and so remained 
silent. He had lost all faith in himself and his 
motives and was a little ashamed to recall the 
conflicting impulses that had swayed him in the 
last hour; his self-control seemed to have broken 
down for a while; he did not now know what he 
had meant to do—things had just happened, and, 
confusedly acquiescent, he had just let them go on 
happening. 


THE FUGITIVE 


221 


As he stood ruminating so, with his hands in his 
pockets, he remembered vividly what he had found 
when he ran up here leaving the police below, 
waiting for him to send Murdock down into the 
ambush they had prepared for him. He had burst 
into the room, meaning, he believed, to carry out 
his plan of betrayal, for he saw no alternative that 
would not involve him in probable disaster; but 
Murdock was not there. He switched on the 
lights, glanced hastily into the other rooms; then, 
coming back, noticed a sheet of paper lying on the 
kitchen table and found it was a letter for himself 
—a letter which a glance showed him Maggie had 
written. He had been alarmed and angry that the 
man he had befriended should have vanished like 
this, without any thought of the predicament 
in which he was leaving his benefactor; but a swift 
reading of the letter quelled his anger though it 
could not subdue his alarm. He realised that 
delay would bring suspicion on him, and rushed 
at once from the room with no idea but to an¬ 
nounce that the bird was flown and as best he 
could, by act and word, vindicate his own 
innocence. 

Now, when the danger, so far as it had 
threatened him, was past, he drew the crumpled 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


222 

paper from his pocket and read again what he had 
read before while he was too distracted to grasp 
more than the essential fact that was written on it: 

“Dear John,—I could not wait. Directly you 
had gone I came here. I went out at the back and 
climbed the walls of the gardens to the end of the 
road and got away in a taxi without being seen. 
The taxi is waiting. I scribble this while Dick is 
changing into some of your clothes, because of the 
descriptions that are out. I told him to, and knew 
you would not mind. I am afraid I shall not dare 
to risk writing to you—not for many years—but if 
you do not hear you will know we have got away 
safely and are happy somewhere, and that we owe 
all our happiness to you. It breaks my heart to 
think of the sorrow I once caused you, but I feel 
you have forgiven me. God bless you always. I 
shall never, never forget you and your wonderful 
kindness to poor Dick. I love you for that, and 
we shall both love your memory. You are the 
noblest and kindest of men. In great haste. We 
are just going.— Maggie.” 

And they were gone. He glanced round the 
room, which looked strangely deserted, and could 
picture her leaning over the table and hear the 
rapid whispering of her pencil on the paper. 


THE FUGITIVE 


223 


He burnt the letter, for safety; he may, too, have 
had a sense of relief in destroying a reminder of 
gratitude that somehow disquieted him. And 
when he rose next morning the whole episode 
seemed far off, and dim and unreal as a nightmare. 

For some days the newspapers were dark with 
veiled hints of clues that were in the hands of the 
police and the probabilities of an early arrest. He 
was visited once or twice by detectives, who 
closely cross-questioned him, but could find no 
grounds for doubting that he had done everything 
he could to assist them. Then, by degrees, the 
topic staled and the press abandoned it. And when 
the weeks and months had lengthened to a year 
and still no tidings came from Maggie, John knew 
that she and her man had successfully evaded 
pursuit and were happy somewhere, and honour¬ 
ing and blessing his name who had so magnani¬ 
mously rescued them from despair and given them 
that chance to be happy. 


AN INTERRUPTED ROMANCE 


The trouble with Amos Crapp was not that he 
couldn’t earn as much as other men of his craft, 
but that, when he had paid for the inordinate beer 
supply essential to his personal sustenance, the 
surplus left out of his week’s wages was scarcely 
sufficient to keep his wife and children in bread and 
cheese. 

This was a harrowing circumstance to a man 
of his disposition, and the sight of his wife’s pinched, 
complaining face and his children’s neglected looks 
naturally irritated him so much that he spent as 
little of his time at home as possible. 

On occasions of domestic affliction when med¬ 
icine or superior food must be had for the invalid, 
he soothed his anguish and tided over the emer¬ 
gency by begging what he could of his wife’s 
relations and pawning bits of the furniture. But 
this, in the result, only added to his tribulations, 
for he was presently on speechless terms with his 
wife’s relations, who seemed to expect him to give 
224 


AN INTERRUPTED ROMANCE 225 


them their money back, and exasperated by a 
shortness of household utensils and the naked 
aspect of his rooms. 

One night, after sedulously irrigating his con¬ 
stitution with its customary nourishment, he 
arrived home to find his children sleepless with 
hunger, and his wife, amid the shabby salvage of 
their furniture, abandoned to tears. His feelings 
were considerably lacerated by this inconsiderate 
display; indeed, her reception of him betrayed such 
a completely unsympathetic attitude of mind that, 
in the first bitterness of his resentment, he—not 
to put too fine a point on it—punched her and 
blacked her eye. 

She was not so nice looking as she had been 
once upon a time, nor so spirited. Having become 
inured to his peculiarities, she neither offered 
opposition to his displeasure, nor reproached him 
afterwards. And in the morning the appearance 
of her eye was a fresh trial to him. He was hurt 
that she did not consider his feelings a little and, 
at least, try to be cheerful and make his life happier. 
Before going out to work he counted up the 
balance remaining from his last night’s expenses, 
and, finding it to be eightpence, deposited four- 
pence on the table for the benefit of his family. 


226 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


It was more than he could comfortably spare, but 
fortunately this was pay-day, and an occasional 
impetuous generosity was one of his redeeming 
features. 

“Look a-here, now,” he said, with the calmness 
of despair, “I’m sick of all this sniveilin’. I can’t 
stand it. No man could. So I tell yer straight— 
you won’t see no more o’ me. I ain’t cornin’ back 
home here agen—not no more—so you needn’t 
expect me.” 

The woman attached no meaning to his words; 
he had said that sort of thing too often; but that 
night Amos Crapp did not return. 

When a week or two had passed and vague 
rumours reached her that he had not only left his 
place of employment but had departed beyond 
the cognisance of all who knew him and had, more¬ 
over, taken the precaution not to go unaccom¬ 
panied by the refining influences of feminine 
society, the woman began to breathe freely, and to 
hope he, at last, really meant what he had said. 
For though, strange as it may seem, she had loved 
him in the beginning, her love had long since been 
submerged in misery and changed to fear and 
detestation. 

Being a willing and capable woman, and resolute. 


AN INTERRUPTED ROMANCE m 


for all her submission to his will, she promptly set 
about working for the maintenance of herself and 
her children. She was clever with her needle, 
and supplemented odd jobs of charing with sewing 
work for the slop-shops, for private customers, 
for anyone and everyone who would employ her. 

And so it came to pass that within a couple of 
years she had regained something of the hope she 
had lost and gathered a comparatively comfortable 
home about her. She was happy; and the children 
were better fed and clothed and found life pleas¬ 
anter without their natural protector than ever 
it had been with him. 

Another four years went uneventfully by. The 
eldest boy was sent out to employment, and so 
lightened his mother’s burden, and they were 
humbly prosperous and contented. All this while 
no word reached them of the fugitive. They felt 
no inclination to bestir themselves in search of 
him, and the woman was even allowing herself to 
entertain a settled conviction, born of his long 
absence, that he was dead and she emancipated 
from his authority for ever. 

Latterly, having decent clothing, she had turned 
her thoughts towards religion. The chance visit 
of a local evangelist was responsible for this; she 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


went to his mission hall, and, soothed by his 
teachings, formed a habit of regular attendance, 
and the youngsters went tractably, though not so 
willingly, to his Sunday School. 

Now, one of the leading spirits of this mission 
was an honest, steady-going artisan, a certain Ben 
Summers, who distributed hymn-books among the 
congregation at meetings and helped to take col¬ 
lections; and within a short time he began to pay 
marked attentions to Mrs. Crapp, under the 
evident impression that she was a widow. He was 
unaffectedly a genial, genuine fellow, and it 
happened that, in spite of herself, his comeliness 
and simple sincerity inspired her with a real and 
increasing regard for him. Wherefore, when his 
visits and his interest in her were grown unmis¬ 
takably significant, much as she shrank from the 
ordeal, she thought it best to anticipate what was 
coming and explain to him precisely her matri¬ 
monial position. 

He heard her disclosures with grave disquiet 
and undissembled distress, but, having questioned 
her, was disposed to believe, as she did, that, since 
she had heard no news of him for so many years, 
her husband was in all probability dead. 

But the uncertainty was not to be ignored, and 


AN INTERRUPTED ROMANCE 229 


thereafter he waited patiently for a year, making 
no secret of his growing attachment. They were 
the very best of friends, though no word of love 
had passed between them; and they arrived at a 
tacit understanding that nothing but the doubt 
of their being no obstacle to their union restrained 
him from asking her and her from consenting to 
be his wife. 

At length, even his patience began to exhaust 
itself. 

“It is eight years now since he left you,” said he. 
“Surely no law of man or God condemns us to go 
on wasting our lives like this on the chance that 
he may be alive.” 

She shook her head, not knowing how to answer. 

“I have been talking things over with a friend 
who knows more of legal matters than I do, and it 
seems to me,” he resumed, “there is only one thing 
we can do. I’ll advertise in some English, Aus¬ 
tralian and American papers for him, and if we 
hear nothing inside another year it will be allow¬ 
able to take it that he’s dead. Will you marry 
me then?” 

She hesitated wistfully. She was still under 
forty and contentment and happiness had revived 
her whole nature as well as her good looks, and 


230 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


loving him as now she did, she suppressed her 
hesitancies and gave him the promise he asked for. 

Four months of that year were gone, and the 
advertisements had elicited no response. They 
had lived in daily fear lest their very efforts to 
raise themselves above disaster should plunge 
them into it, but nothing coming out of the silence 
these fears were giving place to hope, and even 
confidence. 

Then one evening the woman went home from a 
service at the mission; her two younger children 
were with her, the elder being not yet returned 
from work. Ben Summers, who accompanied 
them, said good night at the street door, which, for 
the greater accommodation of the various lodgers 
in the house, stood always open, and they passed 
upstairs and into their living-room. 

Immediately Mrs. Crapp fit the gas, one of the 
children ran and clung to her with a startled, 
terrified cry; and glancing round she saw the burly 
figure of a man on the couch. Their entrance had 
awakened him, and he was sitting up, blinking in 
the sudden light. The first swift glimpse she had 
of his bearded, sullen face froze the heart in her 
breast and sent a numbing horror through all her 


senses. 


AN INTERRUPTED ROMANCE 281 


While she was still dumb with amazement and 
dread, he spoke. 

“Well,” he growled, peering at her with bleared 
and blood-shot eyes, “it’s me; that’s who it is. 
Want me, don’t yer? Want me so badly you’ve 
bin advertisin’ for me, and ’ere I am, so you orter 
be glad to see me.” 

She remained mute and motionless as if stricken 
to stone. 

“I seed it in the paper over in the States—in 
Washington, an’ I raised the wind and come home. 
She’s come to her senses, I thinks, and means to 
behave ’erself and wants me back. But I’ll be 
damned if you seem so mighty pleased to see me 
now I ’ave come.” 

He laughed again. 

“I didn’t want you if you didn’t want me, an’ 
a ’ell of a time I’ve been ’avin’ of it to oblige yer, 
but you,” he waved a hand to indicate his sur¬ 
roundings, “you look as if you’d bin doin’ pretty 
well for yerself.” 

She neither heard what he said nor saw him, 
though she never for an instant turned her eyes 
from his face. The new, fair life she had lived 
lately; the newer, fairer life she had dreamed of— 
these were irrevocably lost. It was as if this man 


232 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


had come back out of her bygone night of wretched¬ 
ness and struck them dead there suddenly at her 
feet. 

“Ha! Well, you needn’t tell me no secrets. 
I know all abart it,” he grinned sourly. “I’ve 
found what you was advertisin’ for. Not because 
you was so fond o’ me. A bloke in the Green 
Dragon at the corner told me all about it. A good 
young man, is there? And I shall knock that good 
young man’s notion on the head. Reckon you’ve 
saved a bit, an’ that’s what ’e’s after, but I’m 
here, and I’m here to stay. You wanted me, an’ 
advertised for me, and you’ve got me. What 
more do you want? Why can’t you say something, 
eh? What’s the game? Don’t stand glarin’ at 
me, damn yer, as if you didn’t know me!” He 
had obviously been drinking, and there was the 
old dreadfully familiar menace in his husky tones. 
“I’m tired after my long journey. I want some 
grub, and—here! I ain’t got a brass farden, an’ 
I’m about dried up. Git a move on an’ go an’ 
fetch me a jug o’ swill from the 4 Dragon.’ Go on— 
d’yer ’ear me?” 

She was heart-broken, utterly stupefied with 
grief. She could feel the old loathsome life closing 
about her again, serpent-like, and she was power- 


AN INTERRUPTED ROMANCE 233 


less in its toils. In a flash, she saw the rooms made 
bare and desolate, herself and her children hungry 
again and neglected; but this was her lawful lord 
and master, and she could see no hope but in 
making the best of things by propitiating him with 
dull submission. 

“Damn an’ blarst yer!” he roared, starting to 
his feet and shaking his fist at her. “You’ve had 
it all yer own way—you wanted me back, an’ 
you’ve got me, and now I’m goin’ to have what I 
want for a change. Don’t you try none of yer 
games with me, or—” She shrank trembling as 
if the blow had already fallen on her. “Hear me? 
By Goramighty, if you ain’t fetched that beer 
inside three minutes I’ll bash yer sniggerin’ face 
in!” 

She was too cowed to think of defiance. It had, 
in the days she had been near forgetting, become 
natural for her to obey him in abject fear of his 
violence, and with his return the dormant habit 
reasserted itself. 

Still without speaking, she reached a jug from 
the shelf mechanically, and went out. 


CHARITY 


i 

In her own circle it was commonly agreed that 
Carrie made a fortunate marriage when she became 
the wife of Eric Warner. 

For she had been only a dressmaker’s “hand,” 
and he was a managing clerk somewhere in the 
City, who habitually wore a tall hat, a frock coat, 
and, among other elegancies, some little jewellery. 
It was understood, in short, that he was a gentle¬ 
man, and the size of his salary was referred to with 
considerable respect. 

Perhaps none of those affectionate friends who 
congratulated Carrie envied her more, in secret, 
or made more disparaging remarks about her when 
she was absent, than her sister Mary would have 
done, if Mary had not been rather strictly religious 
and convinced that all envy was wicked. 

She was older than Carrie, and had married 
three years earlier; and her husband, Jacob Bowles, 

234 


CHARITY 


235 


was an ordinary poor man, and looked it. Not by 
taking thought or subjecting himself to any course 
of training could he ever hope to compete with 
Eric Warner in manners or appearance; moreover, 
his salary was too small to be spent or spoken of 
with freedom. 

Yet he was a good enough man in his way, and 
these things troubled him little, if at all. He was 
simple and unambitious, and grew to be innocently 
proud of his brilliant brother-in-law, even to the 
extent of boasting about him to his acquaintance 
and magnifying his importance. 

Mary accepted the situation more seriously. 
Nothing but her religious beliefs kept her from 
being dissatisfied with her lot and ashamed of 
Jacob. She felt her younger sister’s social superior¬ 
ity acutely—or, at least, realised that she would 
have done so had she been a worldlier woman 
than she was. 

And it cannot be denied that Carrie was fond of 
finery and showy appearances. Her dresses were 
expensive and made with exceptional taste, while 
Mary’s were cheap and plain and had a home¬ 
made look about them. When they visited each 
other, too, the same jarring contrasts were mani¬ 
fested in their domestic economy. Carrie would 


236 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


set her table out with silver and serviettes and 
such like vanities; but Mary’s board was humbly 
furnished at the best of times. 

Mary could not but notice these disparities, and 
the significance of them was distinctly offensive 
to her. Who could doubt that Carrie emphasised 
them with the deliberate purpose of making her 
feel her inferiority and what a gulf there was be¬ 
tween them? 

“I don’t like it,” Mary admitted. “I thought 
she would have been above that kind of thing. 
I am disappointed in her.” 

“P’raps she don’t mean nothin’,” ventured 
Jacob. “Maybe it’s only her way.” 

“I don’t care—I don’t like it--” 

“I don’t bother myself-” 

“I’m quite as good as they are, and in justice 
to myself I think I ought to let them see I know 
that—in justice to myself and to you, Jacob.” 

“ Oh, never mind about me, missis.” 

“No! I daresay! The way you always knuckle 

down to him, Jacob-” 

“Well, he’s a decent enough chap. Him and me 
is all right. He does bounce a bit, I know; but 
then, he’s a clever chap, Mary; cleverer than me, 
anyhow; an’ I don’t mind.” 



CHARITY 


237 


“No. You’ve got no proper pride, Jacob. 
You’d let anybody wipe his boots on you. That’s 
where it is.” 

“I always thought you were agin pride, my 
dear.” 

“Not proper pride. I’m not proud, but I’m 
the elder sister, and I hope I know what is due 
to me, to my self-respect. Who are they, I should 
like to know? Surely I’m as good as my own 
sister!” 

But she went to church next Sunday, and the 
music and the sermon together lifted her to such a 
lofty spiritual altitude that she was able to look 
down on Carrie with a beautiful pity and pardon 
her—until Monday morning. 

“They only strive after the treasures of this 
world, which are not worth having, ” she said 
resignedly. “We are happier without them.” 

And Jacob was glad of that; for he saw very 
little prospect of their ever getting them. 

ii 

In the course of some five or six years, Carrie had 
two children; which was another distinction Mary 
might have resented had she been less regenerate, 


238 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


for she had none. As it was, her sole regret was 
that Carrie did not bring up those children of hers 
more satisfactorily. 

“She pampers and spoils them, Jacob,” was her 
opinion. “She dresses them so extravagantly, 
and teaches them such high and mighty manners— 
such affected airs—. Dear me! their father might 
be heir to a peerage, at the very least.” 

“Well, my dear, if it pleases them-” 

“Oh, it’s the children I’m sorry for, poor things! 
What can you expect them to be like when they 
grow up, with such a training?” 

“It’s no good, old gel. We can’t help it.” 

“That is no reason why we should approve of it. 
I must say what I think. Such impoliteness—such 
airs—such pride and wasteful extravagance! And 
did you see the new watch-chain he had on this 
evening?” 

“Eric? No. I didn’t notice particularly.” 

“Solid gold. She gave it him as a birthday 
present. As if she couldn’t give him something 
useful! Says she saved up for it out of her house¬ 
keeping money. How much do you think she paid 
for it?” 

“Give it up.” 

“Ten guineas.” 


CHARITY 


239 


Jacob whistled. 

“Ten—guineas!” Mary repeated. “She told 
me herself. A sin and a shame, I call it—such 
wicked waste! ” 

“It’s all right if they can afford-” 

“But they can’t! I don’t care if his salary’s 
twice as much as they say it is—what do they 
want with gold chains at that price—in their 
position? All done for show! They’re living 
beyond their income—I’m sure they are—with 
their servants and their haughtiness and seven 
o’clock dinners, and—oh, I haven’t patience with 
such goings on!” 

Probably an impartial observer would not have 
been aware of these objectionable features in the 
life and manners of Mr. and Mrs. Warner. They 
liked to be admired, it is true, and were fond of 
high talk and display; they dressed well, lived 
well, and certainly did not err on the side of 
economy—otherwise, they were a kindly disposed 
folk, genial, hospitable, and blindly ignorant of the 
annoyance they were causing Mrs. Bowles. 

But a day came when their glory departed from 
them. 

Eric lost his situation. 

Precisely how he lost it nobody appeared to 


240 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


know. Sinister rumours got afloat of moneys em¬ 
bezzled from his office, and a prosecution merci¬ 
fully abandoned; but as nothing certain was known 
all the friends of the family were able to believe 
the worst. 

The one indubitable fact was that Eric was out 
of employment. 

Presently he and his family declined into cheap 
lodgings, and grew unostentatious, and even 
shabby; and for a year or so he picked up a pre¬ 
carious livelihood, travelling on commission in the 
coal trade. By now they had removed to Camber¬ 
well, but the Bowles’s still remained at Willesden; 
so they did not visit each other during this period, 
and kept up but a desultory correspondence. 

Then, one evening, a letter from Carrie an¬ 
nounced that her husband was dangerously ill. 
It was a humble, distressful letter, saying they were 
in sore need of help, and would be grateful if 
Mary could lend them a pound to tide them over 
immediate difficulties. 

Mary’s mouth hardened, and she passed the 
letter to Jacob. 

“What did I say?” she cried. “I knew what 
they would come to. And suppose you were taken 
ill, who would help us, I should like to know? 


CHARITY 


241 


They have brought it all on themselves, and now 
they want to make us suffer for their folly. It isn’t 
right or just, and I will not do it. They wasted 
all he earned, and more—they never attempted to 
save anything themselves, and it’s not right, 
Jacob, that your hard-earned savings should be 
frittered away on members of my family who have 
been so grossly improvident.” 

“But if the poor chap’s ill-” 

“It’s a judgment on him. We should never 
see it back. The Good Book says, Pride goeth 
before a fall. As they made their bed—there it is! 
You might be laid up—I’ve got to think of you. 
It’s your money, and they’re not your people. 
It hurts me to refuse, but I must consider you, 
Jacob, if not myself; and it would not be fair to 
you.” 

Jacob was not anxious that his small hoard 
should be dissipated; he knew, too, that to argue 
with her would only increase her obstinacy; so 
he listened and said nothing. 

By return of post Mary wrote a nice, sisterly 
epistle to Carrie expressing her grief, and how 
gladly she would have done anything in her power 
for them, but she explained that Jacob’s salary 
was so small that really they had not always 


242 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


enough even for themselves; she did not like to ask 
Jacob to break into the trifle they had put by for 
the rent and things, and hinted that they had lived 
sparely within their income and avoided extrava¬ 
gance, all along, otherwise she did not know how 
they could have managed at all. She suggested 
that some of Eric’s well-to-do friends could better 
assist them, if asked; sent her love and Jacob’s to 
them both, with kisses for the children, hoped 
Providence would aid them, and undertook to 
remember them in her prayers. 

But Providence did not go to their assistance; 
and Eric’s well-to-do friends seemed to wait for it 
to give them a lead; for a fortnight later came 
another letter from Carrie, humbler and more 
appealing than the first. Eric was still ill, she said, 
but slowly improving; they had sold nearly all 
they had of value, and were practically destitute— 
“even while I am writing this,” she wrote, “the 
children are crying for food.” 

Jacob was touched; Mary herself was not un¬ 
moved. But saving had become a mania with 
them—with Mary especially—and the thought of 
reducing their modest balance in the Savings’ 
Bank gloomed over them cloud-like. 

This second appeal had come by the last post 


CHARITY 


243 


on a Saturday night, and they went to bed per¬ 
turbed and undecided. 

Next morning at church, however, Mary re¬ 
lented; the pathos of the music and the sermon 
sensitised her moribund emotions, and melted 
her completely. This and a flattering vision of 
herself going as Lady Bountiful to that afflicted 
family urged her onward to a high resolve. 

“I will go down there directly after dinner,” 
she told Jacob, on the way home, “and take them 
two pounds. That is all we have in the house. 
If he is really ill and they are starving—why, of 
course, we must do it. It is a Christian duty. 
They have brought it all on themselves and 
don’t deserve anybody’s help, but we must be 
charitable Jacob, and you must try to forgive 
them-” 

“So fur as I’m concerned-” 

“It isn’t for us to judge them, Jacob. They are 
suffering for their own folly. But blessed are the 
merciful. We shall never get it back—we can 
never expect any return, but we won’t think of 
that. The Lord loveth a cheerful giver.” 

Jacob having a slight cold, and one rail fare 
being less than two, she went to Camberwell alone. 

The journey was long and dreary, and it came 



244 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


on to rain soon after she started; consequently 
she arrived at her destination wet and tired and 
out of humour. Her enthusiasm had waned and 
died on the road, and she was beginning to think 
if she gave them a pound-note it was more than 
she could strictly afford and as much as they 
would expect. 

She found their lodgings comfortless enough, 
but not so desolate as she had pictured them to 
herself; and, though Carrie was not looking well, 
she did not look actually ill, nor had she discarded 
all her genteel affectations. The children did not 
seem desperately unhappy either, and were still 
passably dressed. 

Mrs. Bowles noted these details, and was 
vaguely dissatisfied with them. 

She went with Carrie to say a few sympathetic 
words to Eric, who was in bed, and apparently 
somewhat broken in spirit. Afterwards, she sat 
in the dingy little parlour-kitchen, and listened to 
Carrie’s story of their tribulations, and wept with 
her, even while she fumed now and then within 
herself because she fancied that Carrie still re¬ 
tained airs of superiority and did not rightly 
appreciate how entirely their social attitudes 
toward each other had been reversed. 


CHARITY 


245 


“You must have suffered terribly,” she agreed. 

“We have sold almost everything worth any¬ 
thing, ” said Carrie. “ If I had not got four shillings 
last night on Eric’s trousers and waistcoat we 
should have had no dinner to-day.” 

“Dear, dear, how terrible! And what has 
become of Eric’s gold watch-chain?” enquired 
Mary, in tones of kindly curiosity. “It was an 
expensive one, wasn’t it?—and ought to be worth 
a good bit.” 

“Oh, the one I gave him once, on his birthday?” 
said poor Carrie, her eyes moistening. “That was 
one of the first things we parted with. We pawned 
it at Willesden, before we left there. The second 
year’s interest is due on it next week. I could 
hardly spare the first, but I hoped to get it out for 
him some day. But we cannot afford to pay it 
this time, and I can’t ask anybody to pay it for 
us. He will be so sorry to lose it—and I didn’t 
want him to—but it is beyond us now—it will 
have to go.” 

“How much is it pawned for?” 

“Two pounds.” 

“That’s very little. It cost ten guineas, didn’t 
it?” 

“Yes. But I would not borrow more on it— 


246 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


it was my present to him, and Eric thought if it 
was not much we might be able to get it back before 
long. But-” 

She sighed, and shrugged her shoulders hope¬ 
lessly. 

“Well, my dear, we can’t afford such extrava¬ 
gances, Jacob and me. You know that. But we 
want to do whatever we can for you, and if it 
would be a help to you at all—we can pinch and 
scrape and make it up somehow—we will buy the 
chain for, say, a pound. I’m afraid we can’t afford 
more. We’ve never been able to buy that sort of 
thing. There’ll be two pounds and the interest to 
pay at the pawnshop—about three pounds ten 
altogether. A lot of good money for the likes of us, 
who are only poor people. But at a time like this 
— We really don’t want it, of course, but we are 
anxious to do our best. ...” 

Carrie hesitated. 

“Eric won’t like letting it go-” 

“It’s no use to him where it is,” said Mary, 
bridling somewhat. “He’ll lose it if he can’t pay 
the interest, and it will pay him better to sell it to 
us than to lose it, I suppose.” 

“Yes,” Carrie assented tearfully. “He won’t 
like letting it go, though, because I gave it to him.” 



CHARITY 


247 

“Oh, well, please yourself, dear. You know 
best. Only I thought the money might be more 
useful to you just now than a watch-chain which 
you can’t redeem. But don’t part with it if you’d 
rather not.” 

Carrie had risen. 

“Don’t say anything to Eric about it. We need 
not tell him,” she said. “Wait a moment. The 
ticket is in the next room. I will fetch it.” 

And on the following Sunday, when Jacob 
accompanied his wife to church, Eric’s watch-chain 
glittered magnificently across his waistcoat. 


THE SPECTRE OF A SIN 


The streets had been swept by a flaw of rain that 
left the air cool and the pavements glistening. 
A light of sunset blazed above the western house¬ 
tops, and the shining, tumultuous city was spanned 
by the fairy arch of a rainbow. 

Along Aldgate High Street pedlars had drifted 
back to the kerbs, and, filtering out from places of 
temporary shelter, the stream of pedestrians on 
each side of the way swelled to full tide again. * 

The roll of wheels, the tramp of feet, the babble 
of many voices blended to a surging monotony of 
sound, a drone so insistent and unvarying that a 
scream which shrilled of a sudden broke through 
it as startlingly as a lightning flash breaks from the 
vast blackness of a storm. A scattered shouting 
of excited voices followed it; everybody within 
hearing paused, and faces of enquiry were turned 
all in one direction. Out in the road, in the thick 
of the rush of traffic, where motor-buses, wagons 
and carts were speeding this way and that in close 

248 


THE SPECTRE OF A SIN 


249 


procession, a vociferous van-driver was tugging 
at his reins; his horses were rearing affrightedly, 
and a terror-stricken child sprawled under their 
lifted hoofs. 

In that same breathless instant some men and 
a woman sprang forward from the arrested crowds, 
but the woman was first. She plunged recklessly 
for the child, snatched him out of danger, and 
coolly, jauntily, though with a slight unsteadiness 
of gait, threaded her way back with him to the 
pavement where a younger woman with a baby 
in her arms stood weeping hysterically. 

This woman, the mother of the rescued child, 
was a timorous little creature, pale, and pretty 
in a homely fashion, and well but plainly dressed. 
The other, tall and yellow haired, made a notice¬ 
able figure in her scanty-shabby finery; her faded 
good looks had been plentifully restored with 
rouge, and she radiated an undeniable odour of 
ardent spirits. 

“Here y’are,” she cried, with rough friendliness. 
“The kiddy ain’t hurt. Take ’old of him and gi’ 
me the baby. I’ll carry it for yer a bit. You 
take ’old of him an’ pull yerself together, my 
dear.” 

The change of burdens was readily effected, the 


250 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


distracted mother catching up the elder child and 
kissing him frenziedly, as if she could scarcely yet 
convince herself that she had him safe. 

‘‘He was holding my dress as we crossed the 
road,” she explained brokenly, “and I did not 
know he had left go until—oh, my dear, my dear, 
God bless you for it.” 

“Now you try an’ quiet yerself,” urged the 
other, “Gord don’t want to worry hisself about me. 
The little chap’s right enough. Which way are 
yer goin’?” 

The two walked on together and, the crisis being 
past, the crowd thinned out about them and lost 
interest in their welfare. 

“I don’t know how to thank you,” faltered the 
mother presently. “Whatever should I have 
done! . . . You—you saved his life-” 

“Oh, Lord!” laughed the other carelessly. 
“Stow that! Somebody else would ha’ done it 
if I hadn’t. He’d ha’ jumped up hisself in a jiffy 
without nobody helpin’ him, wouldn’t you, 
Johnny, my love? Don’t you fret. Goin’far?” 

“Only to the chapel in Commercial Street. My 
husband will meet me there. He is going straight 
there from his office. Oh, but, my dear, I wish,” 
she glanced at her companion with a diffident 



THE SPECTRE OF A SIN 


25 1 


compassion, “I do so wish we could do something 
to show you how grateful we are. Do you mind 
telling me if—if there is anything we can do—any¬ 
thing, my dear, to help you?” 

She was so hesitant, so timid, so humbly fearful 
of giving offence, yet what she was thinking of her 
benefactor was so transparent, that the other 
woman laughed outright. 

“Lord love yer! I’m past all help, I am. I’m 
all right.” 

“Don’t say that, my dear,” pleaded the little 
woman tearfully. “We owe our boy’s life to you. 
Tell me where you live, and do let us-” 

“Oh, I live in all sorts o’ places. Don’t say 
any more about it.” 

They walked for a minute in silence, then: 

“I don’t know your name-” Though the 

mother of the children gave her an opportunity 
the other left the blank unfilled—“but—I shall 
remember you always in my prayers.” 

“That’s all right, dearie, that won’t do me no 
’arm, anyhow,” said the outcast, indifferently; 
“nor it won’t do me a fat lot o’ good eether, I 
expect.” 

By this they had turned into Commercial Street, 
and were close upon the iron gateway of the chapel. 



252 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


a sombre, unlovely building sandwiched between 
two shops. 

“I should be so glad if—if you would come in 
with me, ” ventured the mother, nervously. 

The other laughed again. 

“No, thanks. Don’t fancy myself in a pew! 
. . . Why, what would the good people think of 
yer? Can’t yer see what I am, without me tellin’ 
yer? Can’t everybody see it?—an’ be damned to 
’em!” 

“ But, my dear, ” they were standing now at the 
entrance, “please don’t be angry with me—you 
have been so kind—so good—and I can’t bear to 
leave you like this. I am so afraid you are not— 
you are not happy-” 

“I shouldn’t be no happier sittin’ in no bloomin’ 
chapels!” Seeming instantly to repent of her 
harshness, she added apologetically, “I know what 
you’re thinkin’, dearie. I daresay you reckon I’m 
goin’ to hell in a non-stop, and so I am. I’m there 
already. My life’s hell enough for any poor devil. 
But I was as good as you are, once, ” she went on 
bitterly, “an’ might ha’ bin still, if it hadn’t bin 
for a bloke I used to know. Same old story, dearie 
—dessay you’ve heard it before. I was a young 
mug them days, an’ he bamboozled me, yer know 


THE SPECTRE OF A SIN 


258 


—promised I was to be his wife if I bolted with him, 
but ’e sloped as soon as he was sick o’ me, before I 
got the marriage lines, and I ain’t set eyes on him 
since—lucky for him! I couldn’t go back home 
then, y’ see. There was a kiddy that died, an’ 
there I was! It was the streets or starvation; 
an’ he’d spoiled me for a saint. That’s all. And 
it’s all right. What’s it matter? All the same 
in a hundred years!” 

“Oh, I’m so sorry, my dear. But I don’t like 
to let you go away like this. Will you—I wish 
you would wait and let my husband thank you. 
He will be here-” 

“Not if I knows it, thank you! Preachin’ at 
me only makes me swear. I don’t mind you. 

You are a good little thing. But- Here, cop 

’old of the baby, an’ I’ll cut!” 

“Alice! What’s the matter?” 

It was a suave, masculine voice that interposed, 
with a hint of remonstrance in the tone of it. The 
speaker, who had approached unobserved, was a 
middle-aged, narrow-headed man, slightly bearded, 
and clothed in seemly black; he carried a Bible 
under his arm. 

“Oh, Charley! I’m so glad you’ve come. This 
is my husband, my dear-” 



254 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


And, bursting into tears again, she became so 
absorbed in a rapid, incoherent narrative of what 
had happened that she did not notice how, at the 
first swift meeting of their eyes, the woman and her 
husband knew each other. 

A ghastly astonishment flashed across the man’s 
face and left it grey and drawn. A sudden wrath 
and hatred flamed into the woman’s eyes and was 
starting into words upon her lips, when a glance 
at the gentle, appealing face of the man’s wife, 
perhaps some flitting thought of her gracious 
words and foolish affectionate gratitude, touched 
and silenced her, as if a quick finger had been laid 
upon her mouth. Why for no possible profit to 
herself should she break the heart of this simple, 
trustful little soul as her own had once been 
broken? 

“We must do something for her,” said the wife, 
and, lowering her voice to a covert whisper, “We 
must help her—she is poor, and unhappy-” 

“We shall have to go in, Alice,” the man said 
uneasily and irritably. He was trying to hope he 
had not been recognised and was anxious to be 
gone. “Yes, yes, of course, I am deeply grateful 
—anything we can do. . . . We can’t stand here. 
We must go in. Thank you very much. We owe 


THE SPECTRE OF A SIN 


255 


you more than. . . . You must let me repay you 

in some way. . . . Will you please-” 

He dived a shaking hand into his pocket, and as 
the woman, having thrust the baby into his wife’s 
arms, was turning hurriedly away, he adroitly 
slipped a handful of silver into her palm before she 
realised what he was doing, and then promptly 
hustled his wife and the boy on before him through 
the iron gateway. 

‘ ‘ Here! You—you-! ” 

The woman rapped out a lurid imprecation and 
swung round, quivering with fury; but at the sight 
of that quiet little wifely figure, the pitying face 
glancing back at her, she clenched her teeth upon 
her rage abruptly; she sent the coins ringing over 
the pavement after him, and, ghost of his dead 
past as she was, vanished from him again into the 
outer darkness. 

He knew then, bewilderedly, that the woman 
had really recognised him, and, since she was not 
as he was, he marvelled darkly at her forbearance, 
and was duly thankful for the mercy Providence 
had vouchsafed to him; for it enabled him still 
to enter in and sit amid the elect unashamed. 



TILLY’S SISTER 


“What did he mean, though, Tilly?” 

Tilly coloured under her powder and answered, 
with an uneasy laugh: 

“Gawd knows! Dirty little swine! What boy 
was it?” 

“Young Jim Dowler. We was cornin’ from 
school and he calls to me that his mother says you 
was nothin’ better than a common-” 

“You needn’t say it agen, Kit,” Tilly inter¬ 
rupted sharply. 

“An’ he says she said when I’d grown up, you’d 
make me as bad as you are, and she’d a mind 
to get some society she knowed of to take me 
away.” 

“And what did you say?” asked Tilly, with 
affected indifference. 

“Me?” cried Kit, doubling a small brown fist. 
“I said I wouldn’t go with no society—and you’d 
see they didn’t take me. And I punched his head 
for him and he went home snivellin’.” 


256 


TILLY’S SISTER 


257 


Tilly laughed again discordantly; then, incon¬ 
sistently enough, burst into tears. 

“Don’t cry, Tilly,” faltered the child, beginning 
to cry herself. “They won’t take me. You 
wouldn’t let them take me, would you? ” 

“Let ’em try!” Tilly ejaculated vehemently. 
“Never you believe anything they say about me, 
Kit. It’s all lies! Never mind what I am. What’s 
that to them? Is it me, your own sister, Kit, 
that’ll bring you to the bad? Am I that sort?” 

“I told him he was a young liar,” Kit whim¬ 
pered earnestly. “I punched his head for him, and 
I’ll do it agen if he says that about you any more.” 

“Are my eyes red?” enquired Tilly abruptly. 

She looked into the cracked mirror over the 
mantelpiece at the reflection of a face still hand¬ 
some, though a coarse blight had marred its 
natural womanly sweetness. Her eyes were 
softened now with tears, but a touch with a hand¬ 
kerchief and a dab of powder quickly removed all 
superficial traces of emotion. 

The room—a combination of bed and sitting- 
room—was on a third floor in a dingy street off 
Whitechapel Road, and the two sisters were its 
sole tenants. 

They were orphans; the father had been of that 


258 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


waste offscouring of humanity that goes to feed the 
gallows; the mother, a poor-spirited creature, 
troubled with elusive family traditions of early 
respectability and more recent religion, died miser¬ 
ably within a year of him. Whereupon Tilly had 
set herself to grapple with the responsibilities of 
existence. She was at that time only seventeen, 
some nine years older than the childish sister 
whose wistful, innocent helplessness appealed to 
her irresistibly, and whom she loved, since her 
mother’s death, with an almost maternal solicitude. 

She had continued her ill-paid slavery at the 
match factory with renewed zeal, though not 
without feminine yearnings after unattainable 
finery and those comfortable earthly heavens 
that are opened with golden keys. Then befell a 
day when the girls revolted against the long hours 
of monotonous drudgery and the niggardly wage 
on which they were supposed to maintain them¬ 
selves, and went on strike. Having Kit to think 
of, and no relatives to turn to for assistance, Tilly 
hesitated to join them at the outset, but an intim¬ 
ate knowledge of their hardships, and the sordid 
wretchedness of her sister’s life and her own, 
pleaded on the side of the rebels, and she resolutely 
threw in her lot with theirs. 


TILLY’S SISTER 


259 


And, during the wintry weeks of privation that 
ensued, one of the strikers, as forlorn as herself, 
told her of an unlicensed by-way that led into those 
earthly heavens of her desire; she remembered 
her little sister’s starved face, the grinding toil 
and weariness of the past, looked at the prospect 
of resuming it in the near future, and there was 
nothing to hold her back. 

Her one satisfaction, amid the regrets that some¬ 
times fretted her in her unhallowed paradise, had 
been that not only could she indulge her love of 
freedom and finery and pretty things, but she was 
able to send Kit to school well fed and warmly 
clad, instead of in rags and often hungry. 

However depraved she might have grown, that 
old fostering love of her small sister kept its white¬ 
ness within her. So far, she had found it easy to 
deceive the child with plausible fictions; she 
shrank with a sense of loathing and humiliation 
from the idea that Kit should form any suspicion 
of the actual fife she was living. More than once, 
of late, she had felt it might be kinder to send Kit 
away somewhere, to place her where she would be 
surrounded by healthfuller influences; but she had 
gladly seized any excuse for postponing the hour 
of separation; until now, a hint of the shameful 


260 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


truth having come to the child at last, she was near 
to determining that she would yield her up in¬ 
stantly even to that society with which she was 
threatened. 

As she reviewed her complexion in the cracked 
mirror, this half-determination smouldered in her 
mind; it needed but a spark to fire it into a fixed 
resolve, and that night the spark fell on it. 

She went out shortly after tea. 

“Get your lessons done, an’ go to bed. Kit, 
there’s a dear,” she said, as usual, before going. 
“Don’t you sit up for me. I may be rather late.” 

Immediately the street door slammed below, 
Kit slipped her hat on and ran noiselessly down¬ 
stairs. It was not that she distrusted her sister; 
she was simply drawn by a childish, overmastering 
curiosity to see for herself where she did go of an 
evening. 

Along Aldgate, through Houndsditch, and 
across Bishopsgate Street she dodged among the 
people, following Tilly at a discreet distance, but 
never losing sight of her. In Liverpool Street she 
saw a man stop and speak to her; they stood 
chatting casually, then strolled on together. 
Evidently a friend of Tilly’s. The man was of an 
elegant species, known to the urchins of Kit’s 


TILLY’S SISTER 


£61 


acquaintance as “nuts”; he was neatly dressed, 
after the manner of his kind, wore a glossy tall 
hat and dangled a cane. 

They traversed the crowded thoroughfares 
leisurely, disappearing, at length, into a flashy, 
foreign restaurant, and, after loitering irresolutely 
some way off. Kit ventured forward and peered 
furtively in at the door. And there, in the gay, 
thronged shop, Tilly and the gentleman sat at a 
round table, feasting luxuriously. 

Kit was still absorbed in the sight when a waiter 
suddenly appeared at her elbow, and frightened 
her by demanding in broken English what she was 
doing there. 

“Oh, I’m—I’m looking for somebody,” stam¬ 
mered Kit. “There she is—that’s her.” 

And, too scared to hesitate or reflect, she walked 
hurriedly in down the shop, and plucked timorously 
at her sister’s sleeve. 

Tilly turned upon her with a swift look of dismay. 

“Hullo!” grinned the gentleman. “You’re a 
dem fine little gel, ain’t you? Sister, eh? And a 
wonderful likeness, too. He, he, he!” 

He put up his eye-glass, and, taking Kit’s chin 
between his finger and thumb, glanced archly at 
Tilly and mumbled an oblique jest. 


262 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


The next instant, the waiters and all the diners 
at other tables were startled by a resounding spank. 
Tongues fell silent, and half a hundred eyes, all 
gazing in the same direction, beheld Tilly’s gentle¬ 
man seated alone, staring at nothing in blank 
amazement; one hand involuntarily caressing his 
tingling cheek and the other groping feebly for the 
eye-glass which was hanging down his back. 

Tilly had risen, and, convulsively clutching the 
bewildered child at her side, she strode indignantly 
to the door; a steely anger flashing from her 
tearless eyes, but broken voices of shame and affec¬ 
tion crying piteously at her heart; and the lonely 
shadow of to-morrow’s separation went through 
the crowd before her all the way home. 


HELEN OF BOW 


Although she had not the beauty of the Grecian 
Helen, she was pretty enough to charm two men, 
and woman enough not to be able to make up her 
mind between them. 

That the two men were every way dissimilar in 
character and appearance only increased her 
difficulty. 

For each had desirable qualities that the other 
lacked, and she was sufficiently capricious to enjoy 
the homage of both, but too soft-hearted to find 
pleasure in giving pain to either; therefore she 
cherished her perplexity in secret and was careful 
that neither should guess he had a rival. 

Her prevailing qualities were an abnormal sen¬ 
timentality, an eager sympathy with all weak and 
dependent creatures; and George Anson appealed 
powerfully to this gentle side of her nature, for he 
was rather delicate; he was thin, pale, diffident, 
and afflicted with a nasty, interesting cough. At 
the same time, and in certain moods she had a 


2 ns 


264 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


sneaking feminine admiration of manly strength, 
of physical energy and the heroic attitude of 
things, and from this standpoint Wat Bolter 
showed to such superior advantage as to be almost 
irresistible. 

The indulgence in many inexpensive, fictitious 
romances, by daily or weekly instalments, had, 
however, made her ambitious. They had fur¬ 
nished her with dreams of marrying a gentleman, 
and becoming a lady. And here George Anson 
regained his ascendency as often as he lost it. 

For it happened that George was an auctioneer’s 
clerk. He wore white linen, a collar and tie, a 
neat suit of black, a watch-chain that looked as 
good as gold, and, on Sundays, kid gloves. More¬ 
over, George had manners, carried a walking-stick, 
and conscientiously tempered his conversation 
with grammar. 

Wat, on the other hand, was merely a green¬ 
grocer’s assistant, travelled a daily round with 
vegetables in a cart, and was at times to be seen 
delivering half-hundreds of coal. Unlike George, 
he was never scrupulously clean; on weekdays a 
wisp of cloth was his only neck-wear, and when, 
on occasion, he was more ceremoniously dressed, 
his coarse flannel shirt was not even masked with a 


HELEN OF BOW 


265 


dickey. His language bristled with slang and 
profanity; his conduct was as rough as his costume, 
and he would as soon have thought of letting her 
get into a bus in front of him as of lifting his hat 
to her. 

Yet he was otherwise a fine specimen of a man, 
broad and tall and muscular, with bright dark eyes 
and bold handsome features. He had a dashing, 
independent, somewhat impudent air with him, 
too, that fluttered the feminine heart; and he was 
not without notoriety as an amateur pugilist. 
George Anson was by comparison insignificant— 
nearly contemptible; but then any such compari¬ 
son was ridiculous—George had to be judged by 
totally different standards. He was a gentleman, 
and Wat’s robuster virtues, admirable perhaps in 
their way, were distinctly ungentlemanly. 

Consequently Helen wavered. She was happy 
with either when the other was away, and torn 
between the two when she thought of them in 
solitude. 

She had known Wat first and was more or less 
reconciled to his inadequacies until George Anson 
appeared and began to honour her with his atten¬ 
tions. His nicer graces dazzled her simple fancy; 
she encouraged him; she liked his grammatical 


£66 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


elegance of speech, walked out with him ten¬ 
tatively, thrilled with a fear that Wat might learn 
of her fickleness, and tried hard to persuade herself 
that George was the man of her choice. He was 
polite and not strong, and his cough made an 
eloquent appeal to her. It pleased her to assume a 
sort of maternal protectiveness toward him, and 
pleased him as much to yield readily in all things 
to her wishes. Wat was not at all like that; he 
was brusque and domineering; he had no use for 
her as a guardian angel, but treated her as though 
she were a foolish child, took his own way, insisted 
that his way should be hers, and, instead of being 
subservient and complaisant, was quick to resent 
her caprices and bullied her and swore at her when 
he was annoyed as freely as if they had already 
been married. 

Helen was still wavering in this fashion when an 
insidious rumour found its way to Wat’s ears and 
disturbed the aboriginal savage that was never 
more than half-asleep in him. 

“Look ’ere, ’Elen,” he remonstrated; “who’s 
this yer bloke that’s bin a-foolin’ rhand abart yer 
lately?” 

“What bloke?” she demanded, flushing and 
inwardly quaking. 


HELEN OF BOW 


267 

“You know well enough. Bill Evans seen you. 
Who is ’e? What yer bin goin’ out with ’im for?” 

“ What’s that got to do with you? I can go with 
who I like, can’t I?” Helen pulled herself together 
and bridled. “Who are you, I’d like to know? 
Cheek! You mind yer own business, Wat Bolter.” 

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” Wat snarled danger¬ 
ously. “Well, that’s what I’m goin’ to do. I’ll 
mind my own business, don’t you fret! So don’t 
you go with ’im no more, see? I’m not no ruddy 
mug, an’ I don’t stand no hanky-panky from any 
gel, nor from any feller. You let me ketch that 
chap alonger you an’—blimey, you won’t know him 
agen when I’ve done with ’im!” 

“Oh, very clever, ain’t you! Well, you leave 
him alone. He’s a friend o’ mine, and I shall go 
out with him as often as I want to. So there!” 

“Will yer?” he snapped. “We’ll see!” 

Helen was ruffled and rebellious; she walked 
with Wat that evening under protest, and they 
wrangled with increasing heat all the way, and she 
returned home weeping but unsubdued. 

It chanced that within a week of this George 
Anson met her as she was coming away from the 
dressmaker’s shop where she was employed. She 
was acutely aware of her new dress and the tasty 


268 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


new feather in her hat, and the bow with which 
George greeted her reacted in his favour, for the 
heroes in her illustrated novelettes were frequently 
depicted in the throes of precisely such a gracious 
obeisance. 

He strolled beside her, discoursing pleasantly, 
his watch-chain glittering in the sunset; and no¬ 
thing marred the harmony of their genteel com¬ 
panionship until they had turned out of the 
crowded Mile End Road and were traversing a 
quiet back street. Here, by accident or design, 
Wat Bolter came upon them unexpectedly. With 
a sudden thrill of terror Helen became alive to the 
fact that he was approaching along the pavement 
with a menacing scowl upon his brow. 

She was stunned with surprise and apprehension. 
She clutched the arm she held, but could not con¬ 
trol herself sufficiently to utter a word of explana¬ 
tion or warning; and, not being acquainted with 
his rival, George went on talking carelessly, his 
serenity entirely unruffled, until Wat was so near 
as to fairly block his progress. Then, before he 
could step aside or look up, without a sound, and 
so swiftly that he did not see it coming, a merciless 
fist shot out and sent him reeling and tumbling 
helplessly into the gutter. 


HELEN OF BOW 


269 


“What did I tell yer?” roared Wat, glaring 
fiercely at the affrighted girl. “Now let him git 
up, damn ’im, and I’ll give ’im as much more as he 
wants. Git up, yer little rat, git up! I’ll teach 
yer to go ’angin’ rhand arter other blokes’ gals!” 

“I’m no gal o’ yours, you bully!” retorted Helen, 
quivering with excitement. “You leave him be. 
I can please myself, can’t I?—without askin’ 
you.” 

“Let ’im git up,” Wat insisted. “Me and ’im 
’ll settle abart that.” 

George scrambled to his feet, a scared and piti¬ 
able object, and stooped to pick up his hat. 

“What have I done to you?” he asked ner¬ 
vously. “I don’t know who you are. I never 
interfered with you.” 

“You’re a liar,” thundered Wat. “She knows, 
if you don’t. Put ’em up, an’ quick abart it.” 

“What do you mean? What’s the matter?” 
George was dazed and demoralised. “Who are 
you?” 

“Don’t you worry abart that,” cried Wat 
clenching his fists and squaring up aggressively. 
“She knows. Put ’em up, before I slosh yer. 
Come on! If you lick me you can ’ave ’er, an’ be 
damned to yer both!” 


270 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“You leave him be,” Helen reiterated. “He 
ain’t going to fight. He ain’t a low fighting black¬ 
guard like you.” 

She was as painfully apprehensive for George as 
a hen might be for its unfledged chicken; if he 
fought she had no doubt of the result; but an 
interested crowd had gathered and was momen¬ 
tarily growing and her vanity was not unpleasantly 
titillated by a vague consciousness of her position 
as the prize for which these two were publicly 
contending. 

“I’ll let ’im be when I’ve done with ’im,” raged 
Wat. “Now then, yer blighter—ready? I’m 
cornin’. Put up yer feelers. D’yer ’ear? Look 
out!” 

With that, he plunged in and the panic-stricken 
George shrank abjectly, elevating a bony elbow to 
protect his hat. There was a brief, wild scuffle; 
two swift blows, then George’s head appeared 
locked under Wat’s left arm, Wat’s right, with a 
huge fist at the end of it, working vigorously, 
piston-like, and as soon as he was released George 
fell limply on his back in the road with his face 
bleeding. 

He lay gasping and half-stupefied for a moment, 
Helen wringing her hands and glancing about 


HELEN OF BOW 


271 


despairingly for the police; then he re-erected 
himself slowly, and, fumbling for his handkerchief, 
stood dabbling his sanguinary countenance. 

“Let me alone,” he sobbed, with a glance of 
entreaty at the crowd. “I never touched him. 
I’ve done nothing to him.” 

The crowd encouraged him with ironical cries, 
advising him to keep his eyes open and go in and 
win. 

“Ain’t he a precious beauty!” jeered Wat, 
pointing him out to Helen. “Look at ’im! Why, 
I’ve ’ardly stroked ’im so far. I’ll knock the 
bloomin’ stuffin’ out of ’im when I make a 
beginnin’. ” 

“Oh, yes, we know what a toff you are!” Helen 
scoffed. “He’s not one of your dirty kind, but 
he’s got as much pluck as you have any day.” 

“ Ho! Then he don’t think you’re worth fightin’ 
for—p’raps that’s it.” 

The crude sarcasm stung her to the quick and 
exasperated her beyond all sense of discretion. 

“Why—why don’t you go for him, George?” 
she urged him, white and shaking with wrath. 
“You’re as good as he is. You ain’t afraid of him, 
are you? Go for him—goon!” 

George clenched his bloody handkerchief, and 


272 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


regarded her through tears of fear and reproach. 
But her words pierced and rankled, and roused 
him; they goaded him out of his bewildered debase¬ 
ment into a rising frenzy of mortification and 
reckless defiance. 

“Afraid? What of? I’m not afraid of him or 
any man,” he shouted desperately. And the 
mere affectation of valour seemed to warm and 
hearten him. He was fired spontaneously with a 
mad craving to redeem his shattered dignity, to 
reinstate himself in her regard and to avenge the 
shame and suffering he endured. A moment’s 
hesitation would have quenched his ardour; but 
he did not hesitate. He struck instantly, as the 
fire within him flared to its height. 

“Come on, you scoundrel!” he blustered. 
“Take that!” 

The mob roared applause, and he hurled himself 
on his enemy. 

A confused scramble of four feet, a whirling of 
arms, a tense panting and sound of hurried blows— 
and George was in the dust once more with more 
blood on his face than ever. 

He sprang up again, but the fire within him was 
flickering to extinction, and he threw a strained, 
hunted look round, as if he had some idea of 


HELEN OF BOW 


273 


making a run for safety. But there was no opening 
in the crowd. Wat was already advancing upon 
him, eager for the fray, and he was giving himself 
up for lost, when help came all of a sudden from a 
wholly unexpected quarter. 

Smarting with humiliation at the sight of her 
damaged champion, Helen had at first been impetu¬ 
ously inclined to scorn and disown him; especially 
when the onlookers laughed at his defeat; but his 
flickering burst of ineffectual courage and the 
crushing punishment it drew upon him touched her 
strangely—it appealed to all the woman in her 
and kindled her to such a pitch of angry compas¬ 
sion that she could restrain herself no longer. She 
rushed upon the conqueror like a tigress, grasped 
his shoulder and swung him heavily back. 

“Look at him—look at him—you beast—you 
coward, you!” she screamed. “Hit one of your 
own size. Do you want to kill him? Oh, you 
brute! He never done anything to you, you dirty, 
hulking-” 

Her shrill voice choked and died in her throat. 
Her hand swept upwards, and Wat, a little aghast 
at this unlooked for intervention, only realised her 
intention when it swept down with a sharp snap 
on his cheek. 


274 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


The mob applauded delightedly, and she fell 
upon him striking and scratching like a fury. Wat 
was so completely dumfounded that, flinging her 
from him after the first outburst, he could only 
stand gaping and spellbound, like a man in an 
impossible nightmare. 

And she took no further notice of him. He heard 
the little vixen bullying George for being such a 
fool as to try to fight such a great big brute like 
that there, and fumed inwardly with a smouldering 
jealous rage as he watched, through the haze of 
his bewilderment, and saw her take that beaten, 
submissive figure by the arm and hustle it away 
through the crowd as if it belonged to her. 


AN EXTRA TURN 


He was a plump little man with an unregenerate 
twinkle in his eye, and looked as if he hadn’t been 
washed or shaved for some time. His coat was far 
gone in decay and had an unwholesome, fungus¬ 
like appearance; his trousers were corrugated into 
preposterous wrinkles, and his boots tied on with 
string. 

“Yus, I’ve ’ad some bad times,” he sighed, “but 
the wust I ever ’ad, sir—I’m not likely to forgit it! 
Hunger an’ cold? Oh, no, nothin’ so easy as that. 
I don’t mind tellin’ you, but as a rule I’d sooner 
talk about something else. 

“It was like this, ” he continued: “I’d bin on the 
tramp with a pair o’ bootlaces in my ’and, in case a 
copper seen me callin’ at a house, y’know, to arsk 
if the kind lady could spare a trifle for a poor man 
that can’t git no work, an’ by two in the afternoon 
all I’d picked up was threepence, so I knocked off 
to spend it. 

“Bynby, I starts agen, an’ hoofs out to one o’ 

275 


276 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


these new ’arf-baked suburbs—I dunno the name 
of it, an’ don’t want to, but I’ve lived a better life 
ever since for fear I might ’ave to go there when I die. 

“All the same, I must say, I didn’t do so bad at 
one house, where a very nice, kind old lady opened 
the door, an’ says, 4 My poor man,’ she says, ‘you 
look hungry.’ ‘Not so hungry as I feel, mum,’ I 
says. ‘Well, sit on the step,’ says she, ‘an’ I’ll see 
if I can’t fetch you something.’ She did, too. Cold 
meat an’ bread for a appetiser, an’, when I’d wolfed 
that an’ said I was still starvin’, she was so upset 
she fetched the leg of a chicken, an’ nearly ’arf a 
cold plum puddin’ which ’ad been as big as a foot¬ 
ball, an’ when I’d finished, I tell yer, I felt fair 
be-au-ti-ful. I felt I couldn’t walk an’ orter ’ave 
somebody to carry me. I arst if there was any 
chance of twopence for a night’s lodgin’, but she 
said she never give cash becos it so often went in 
drink and she was a lifelong teetotaller, an’ she 
wouldn’t break the rule even for one that was 
another. 

“Well, I wasfthat dry 1 tried some more places, 
an’ just about dusk I began on a row of pretty 
villas, all creeper up the front an’ a little passage 
round to the side door. An’, when I mouched 
round the side o’ one of ’em, I seen the kitchen 


AN EXTRA TURN 


277 

winder open an’ heard voices, so I stood quiet an’ 
had a look in. 

“There was the missis of the house, holdin’ a 
plate with a small bit o’ meat on it, an’ from what 
she was tellin’ the gel I made out that that bit o’ 
meat ’ad bin thoroughly well poisoned, an’ later on 
they were to bring down poor Fido, who was awful 
ill an’ orter be put out of ’is misery, an’ give it to 
’im for ’is supper. She put the plate on the dresser, 
an’ then the gal went with ’er out o’ the room. 

“So a idea come to me, all of a sudden. I git 
’em like that sometimes. Little idea, as I thought, 
for makin’ enough for a drink, anyhow. I tries the 
door, slips in quietly, took the plate off the dresser 
an’ put it on the table, slips the meat into my 
pocket, an’ stood waitin’. 

“Next minute, I hears the gel cornin’ back, and I 
says gentle-like, but loud enough for ’er to hear, 
‘Now please don’t you be scared, miss, I’m not 
after no ’arm. I come in and there was nobody 
’ere, an’ now I’m not feelin’ very well.’ 

“She looks in, an’ starts screamin’ direckly she 
see me. An’ presently the missis an’ the master of 
the house come hurryin’ up to ’er to find what’s the 
matter, an’ they all breaks into the kitchen to¬ 
gether. 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


278 

“As soon as the missis seen the empty plate on 
the table she goes pale an’ catches ’er breath an’ says, 
‘Oh, Alfred!’ to the master, an’ ’e says, ‘What?’ 

“‘Beg pardon, sir an’ madam/ says I, humble. 
‘I ’ope as you will forgive me. It was a very small 
slice an’ I ain’t ’ad no food since yesterday. I seen 
it through the winder an’, as there was nobody ’ere, 
the temptation was too strong an’ I ’ad to come in.’ 

“Then they all started in helpin’ each other to 
tell me what was the matter with the meat, an’ I 
put on a faint an’ says, ‘ That’s what’s the matter 
with me, then,’ an’ sinks in a chair. 

“You should ha’ seen ’em. I was afraid they 
was all goin’ mad with fright. They chivies the 
gel off sharp for the doctor. I tried to stop that. 
I said I was pretty ’ealthy an’ thought I should 
git over it, if they’d gimme the brass to run quick 
to the chemist an’ buy somethin’. But they 
wouldn’t listen. They said the poison was painless 
but quite deadly, an’ unless somethin’ was done 
it would out me before I knew how I was. 

“So I begun to take on with hysterics an’ call for 
brandy, but they said brandy would do me more 
’arm than good, besides there wasn’t a drop in the 
house. I’d fair struck a dry patch, guvner. 

“As soon as the gel ’ad gorn flyin’ off, the missis 


AN EXTRA TURN 


279 


says, ‘Whatever we do, Alfred, don’t let ’im go to 
sleep. In these cases if they go to sleep it’s fatal. 
I’ve always read that. Walk ’im about, Alfred, an’ 
keep ’im awake.’ 

“So he grabs me by the arm an’ the neck—hefty 
big chap ’e was—an’ heaves me out o’ the chair an’ 
starts walkin’ me up an’ down the floor. I told ’im 
I wasn’t sleepy, but ’e took no notice—’e was 
excited an’ nervous, an’ I could see ’e was thinkin’ 
’ow they would censure ’im at the inquest, an’ 
there was me walkin’ up an’ down, ’im makin’ me, 
an’ both of us up an’ down, an’ up an’ down to¬ 
gether, like bears in a cage, an’ all the while I was 
thinkin’ ’ow to git away. 

“‘I’m all right now,’ I says, soothin’. ‘I feel 
quite better.’ 

“‘You can’t,’ he says. ‘Hold up. Keep movin’. 
The doctor won’t be long.’ 

“‘Oh, dear, dear,’ says the missis, wringin’ ’er 
’ands, ‘what a time that gel is! ’E can’t feel 
better—of course ’e can’t. I’m afraid our doctor 
must be out an’ she’s gorn on for Dr. Graves. Oh, 
Alfred, look at the poor man, ’e’s goin’.’ 

“I wished I was, but Alfred stuck on to me. 

“‘Isn’t there nothin’ we can do?’ he says. ‘Git 
’im a glass o’ water.’ 


280 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“‘My Gord, no!’ I says. ‘Let me die in peace.’ 

“Then all of a jiffy the missis ’as a brain¬ 
wave. 

“‘Oh, Alfred, why ever didn’t I remember it 
sooner!!’ she shouts. ‘We orter give ’im a emetic. 
Wait a moment. Keep ’im walkin’. ’ 

“An’ she nips out o’ the room like a streak o’ 
lightnin’. 

“I tried desperate to git away arter that, but ’e 
was too strong for me. I dussen’t tell ’im the 
truth, an’ couldn’t think of no excuse that he 
would listen to. All the more I said I was quite all 
right, ’e thought I was gettin’ delirious. ’Is missis 
was ’ardly back in the room when he wouldn’t 
argue but, ’im bein’ twice my size an’ strong as a 
’orse, he bangs me down in a chair, an’ pinches my 
nose with one ’and an’ pulls my mouth open with 
the other, an’ before I could git a word out she ’arf 
chokes me with a spoonful o’ stuff that—my Lord, 
I swear was never meant for inward application. 
They shut my mouth an’ held on to me till it was 
all gorn, an’ then jerks me up an’ starts walkin’ 
me up an’ down ’arder than ever. 

‘“That’s all right,’ I says, as well as I could 
speak. ‘That’s made me quite well.’ 

“‘No, it hasn’t,’ he says. ‘It can’t have, not 


AN EXTRA TURN 


281 


yet/ And presently he calls out, ‘It’s no good, 
Annie. Give ’im another dose/ 

“I made a fight for it, I tell yer. But he ’ad me 
down in the chair agen, an’ they pushed some more 
of it into me that fierce that I began to be afraid 
they’d gone clean dotty, an’ if I didn’t humour 
them they’d throttle me sooner than let me die. 

“‘Let me ’ave a breath o’ fresh air,’ I yells, 
thinkin’ I might stand a better chance of doin’ a 
bunk if I could git outside. ‘That’s what I want/ 

“They seemed to think it a good idea, an’ rushed 
me out into the garden, an’ he starts walkin’ me 
up an’ down the gravel path, till I gasps, ‘ ’Old ’ard, 
guvner. Just loose me for a tick/ 

“It took ’im off ’is guard like, he leaves go o’ 
my arm for a second, an’ off I goes afore he could 
catch ’old agen. 

“I could ’ear ’em both runnin’ an’ shoutin’ 
behind, but I wasn’t ’avin’ no more o’ what they’d 
got to give me, an’ I never looked round nor 
stopped for miles. 

“But all that runnin’ was bad, very bad, arter a 
’eavy meal. An’ them emetics was no good to me. 

“My word! 

“People thinks me unsympathetic an’ ’ard- 
hearted now, becos I can read about a man blown 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


up with dynamite an’ feel no pity for ’im. I can’t 
bear the sight o’ chicken an’ plum puddin’ no more, 
though I don’t expect it was their fault. Oh, I 
know what I’m talkin’ about. If there’s to be 
Prohibition it ought to be agenst them emetics. 
They’re what I call cruelty. Oh—Well, there, if I 
was ever to ’ave my choice in future between them 
an’ the dedliest poison, make you no bloomin’ 
error, I’d chance my luck with the poison, an 5 die 
smilin’.” 


THE WEDDING DAY 


The long white road wavered, like the ghost of a 
dead river, through a flat green country that lay 
parching under a June sun. From the shady re¬ 
cesses of his ancient hostelry, the landlord of The 
Plough emerged into the sunlight, and stared up 
the road and down the road, as if he were looking 
for customers. 

In the arid meadows, behind winding hedgerows, 
cattle stood knee-deep in the dry grass. Here and 
there red-tiled roofs and tarred wooden walls of 
farm buildings gleamed and gloomed amid leafy 
green settings; and the village, a little cluster 
of little houses, snoozed in a distant wrinkle of 
the landscape. But there was nobody on the road. 

Nobody, that is, who counted for anybody with 
the innkeeper; nobody except a tramp, who 
plodded slowly in the shade of the hedge with his 
shabby shoulders hunched and his hands in his 
pockets. The landlord noted his snail-like advance 
with indifference, and went back indoors out of 
the sun. 


283 


284 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


Opposite The Plough the tramp paused to peer 
up at the sign, arching a strong brown hand over 
his brows. He was a big, weather-bitten fellow, 
whose looks expressed nothing but easy-natured 
indolence. A search through several pockets 
yielded no more than twopence. He regarded the 
coins thoughtfully as they lay, looking unusually 
small, in his broad palm, then carried them into 
The Plough and began rapping on the counter, his 
eyes being full of the sunshine, before he detected 
the portly landlord in attendance. 

“Mornin*, boss,” he cried. “I didn’t see you 
there. Gimme the best drop o’ beer you can for 
twopence.” 

He threw down his money; and, seeing he was 
not a tramp of the ordinary, everyday quality, the 
landlord served him liberally and condescended to 
an affable remark about the weather. 

“ A fair scorcher, ” the other agreed. “ Gives you 
a full-size thirst too, don’t it?” 

The landlord nodded. 

“Stranger hereabouts?” he presumed. 

“I am, boss, and I ain’t.” 

“Oh! How may that be?” 

“Well, I was born in these parts.” 

“Was you now?” 


THE WEDDING DAY 


285 


“Ah. Emigrated with my old people when I was 
only a nipper, and, you’d hardly believe it, but I 
don’t remember the place now no more than if I’d 
never seen it before.” 

“Well, well. It hasn’t altered so much either,” 
said the landlord. “Born in Little Totleigh, was 
you?” with a jerk of his head toward the village. 

“No, not there. Just the other side of Chelms¬ 
ford, yonder. I’ve done no good at all, knockin’ 
about abroad, since the old folk died, so I took a 
fancy to work my passage home an’ find out if I’d 
got any relations living in this part o’ the world 
who’d be willing to help me to settle down quiet 
like an’ give me a job as a farm hand or something 
—I’m pretty good at that—and all I want is to 
cast anchor and have a home o’ my own.” 

“And did you find any?” 

“Not one. Haven’t come across a living soul 
who remembers the name even! ” 

“What name is it?” 

“Linnett. George Linnett. George after my 
old dad.” 

The landlord hummed, and shook his head. 

“How long since your family emigrated?” 

“Near forty year.” 

“Ah-h! People die, and move, and forget a lot 


286 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


in forty years. I only came here eleven year ago 
myself.” 

“I might have guessed it was no good. Nothin’ 
I try ever is. I’ve been an unlucky sort of fool all 
my life, boss—a durned all-round fool.” 

“Why,” a comfortable, full-bodied man, the 
landlord could afford to be philosophical, “we’re 
all fools at times, neighbour.” 

“But I’ve been one at all times; that’s what’s 
the matter with me. I’d never have come nosing 
around here at all if I hadn’t been the fool I am. 
Nobody knows me. How could I expect they 
would? I can’t get any work. ... I suppose 
you couldn’t give me a job yourself, boss? I’m 
clean broke, and I could do with a meal. I’m on 
the tramp to London now, and if I could earn a 
trifle to help me on the way-” 

“You wouldn’t do for a waiter,” the landlord 
laughed, “else you might have lent me a hand with 
a wedding dinner I’ve got on to-day. Out o’ my 
usual line rather. The party’s drove in to Chelms¬ 
ford for the ceremony, and they’re cornin’ here for 
dinner.” 

“Swell wedding, I suppose?” 

“Not so bad. Widder and widderer they are.” 

“What you might call a fair match then?” 


THE WEDDING DAY 


287 


“All depends,” said the landlord darkly. “The 
widder’s a nice little woman. She put up at The 
Plough and Eve had her stayin’ here nigh on a year. 
Nice, homely little body, and plenty o’ brass. She 
bought a house of her own just beyond the village, 
and left us and moved into it a few months ago. 
But she’s kept very friendly with my missis and 
insisted on having the dinner here.” 

“Widderer’s a local man?” asked the stranger, 
for the sake of saying something. 

“Yes. Josh Simson. Jobmaster in Chelmsford. 
But, between you an’ me, he’s no good. It’s her 
money he’s after, and when he gets it there won’t 
be much for either of them—not for long. I don’t 

believe she really cares for him-” 

“Then what’s she having him for?” 

“Why, you know what wimmin are. She’s 
lonely; wants a man to take care of her. And he 
has a way with wimmin, Josh has. She didn’t 
know anybody when she first came here, and he’s 
made hisself uncommon obligin’, lent her one of his 

traps and gone about with her helpin’ her to-” 

“Ezra! Ezra! Come and help me here a 
minute,” cried a testy voice from within. “I’ve 
called you three times.” 

“Never heard you, my dear. Cornin’!” 



288 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


Left to himself, George Linnett emptied his 
tankard, contemplated the dusty road and the 
fierce light without, and returned to his high stool 
by the counter. 

The advent of a waggoner, who pulled up his 
team at the door and came in for refreshments, 
recalled the landlord from the depths of the house; 
and, when he had carried bread and cheese and 
beer for this new patron into the cool bar-parlour, 
George felt constrained to put forward some excuse 
for lingering. 

“About that job, now, boss,” he suggested. 

“There’s nothing I know of. What’s your 
line?” 

“Oh, I’ve done everything—farming, painting, 
bricklaying, carpentering, gardening — every¬ 
thing.” 

“ Whitewashing ? ” 

“I’ve whitewashed enough walls to build a 
city.” 

“I was thinkin’, the old house needs touchin’ up. 
I’ve got the stuff in the shed and meant to have a 
go at it myself, but there’s a good deal to do here, 
and I ain’t so active as I used to be, and—” he 
sighed, and frowned dubiously. “I did have a 
man at it last week—happened to be passin’, same 


THE WEDDING DAY 


289 


as you—but he persuaded me to loan him two 
shillin’ on account, and then went and got drunk 
with it at The Red Lion in the village, and I ain’t 
seen him since.” 

“I don’t want no loans. Give me some grub 
and a shake-down o’ nights, in a barn, or anywhere, 
and five bob when it’s finished and I’ll make a real 
job of it for you.” 

The landlord hesitated. He withdrew to consult 
his wife, and, after she had more or less covertly 
surveyed the stranger from a door-way behind the 
bar, he came back and struck the bargain. 

“ Might be as well not to start till this wedding is 
all over, ” he said. “ They’ll be here soon now, and 
we’re giving them their spread in our best parlour 
at the back here. I don’t know, though, but you 
might be making a start on this side o’ the house, 
where it’s shady and they won’t see you. Might 
as well do that. Sooner you start the sooner 
you’ll be done. Come on out, and I’ll show 
you.” 

And so it came to pass that George made a 
beginning. 

He was up a ladder, near the roof, operating with 
a large brush and a pail of water, giving the wall a 
preliminary wash, when he heard the wedding 


290 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


party drive in from Chelmsford. Laughing and 
chatting exuberantly, they bubbled over out of 
two smart traps and poured into the inn. 

“Ezra! What-ho, Ezra!” The bridegroom, 
who had already been refreshing himself and was 
radiating joviality, hammered on the bar, though 
the landlord was already in waiting. “Drinks all 
round, Ezra. We’re all dead dry. Give yer own 
orders, all of you.” 

The bride, a fresh-coloured, plump, comely little 
woman, nearer forty than thirty, perched, moodily 
fanning herself with her handkerchief, on one of 
the high stools; but her husband’s half-dozen 
relatives and friends, male and female, stood in 
vivacious pairs and giggled and flirted with in¬ 
creasing merriment. 

“Tired, Mrs. Simson?” called the landlord, 
toiling dexterously at his beer-engine. 

“A little, ” she sighed. “A little. It’s very hot. 
And all this reminds me so of my other man, poor 
fellow.” 

“Oh, never you mind him,” blustered Mr. 
Simson. “He’s dead an’ gorn, and you’re goin’ 
to forget him now.” 

“Not now, nor ever,” she declared stubbornly. 
“I’ve told you so all along, Josh. And I can’t help 


THE WEDDING DAY 


291 


feeling it’s a mistake—we ought to have waited 
longer. He may not be dead-” 

He broke into a jolly roar of laughter. 

“ You only say that sort of nonsense to aggravate 
me, but I don’t care!” he shouted breezily. “You 
got a good live husband on the spot, and you ought 
to be happy, like me. Hi, Ezra! Where’s your 
missis? Fetch her out, and the gel too. She must 
have something. I’m goin’ to stand treat all round. 
The dinner will keep for a few minutes. Come in 
you two—” he beckoned the drivers from the 
traps. “Come on! Order whatever you like. 
Everybody’s in this. Anybody else in the house, 
Ezra? I won’t have nobody left out. I don’t get 
married every day.” 

“There’s nobody else—except a waggoner havin’ 
a snack in the bar-parlour.” 

“ He’s got to have a drink.” The wedding guests 
laughed with him and cheered. “Fetch out the 
waggoner, Jim.” 

Mr. Simson slapped his spruce best-man heartily 
on the back, and the waggoner was soon ducking 
and grinning obligingly at the company over a 
tankard. 

“Now are we all here, Ezra?” 

“Plenty of us.” 


292 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


“Didn’t I notice a painter on a ladder round the 
corner outside?” 

“Oh, he’s busy.” 

“Never mind. All are welcome! Fetch in the 
painter off the ladder, Jim.” 

“Now you leave him be. My last painter got 
drunk and went off an’ never finished the job, 
and-” 

“ That don’t matter—they all do. Fetch in that 
painter, Jim,” Mr. Simson noisily insisted. “I 
won’t have a man left out in the cold on a day like 
this. Here—damme, I’ll fetch him myself.” 

He dashed out, and after a brief absence brought 
George back with him in triumph. 

“Here he is,” he laughed uproariously. “Draw 
him a mug of the very best, Ezra. Put a head on 
it—put two heads on it. There we are! Here, 
painter, pour this down yer neck and drink good 
luck to me and the missis.” 

George Linnett raised his tankard, with an 
elaborate bow toward the bride. 

“My very best respects, mum,” he began, “and 

may you-” He stopped and gaped, and gasped 

“ Goramighty! Sal—what on earth are you a-doin’ 
here?” 

“George!” she screamed. 


THE WEDDING DAY 


293 


She was off the stool in a twinkling, and flung 
herself upon him in such a frenzy that he staggered 
under the impact and the tankard fell and the beer 
splashed over the nearest boots. 

“George! Oh, my dear, dear lad!” she was 
crying and laughing, heedless of the amazement 
and confusion that was paralysing all the others. 
“I can’t believe it. An’ you’re not dead!” 

“No,” he rumbled, submitting to her embraces 
without a struggle. “Not that I knows of.” 

“Where have you been? When did you come 
here?” 

“I come to Chelmsford three days ago. Y’see I 
was born-” 

“I know. I remembered you told me. That’s 
why I came here—thinking I might find you or 
somebody that had belonged to you. Oh, George, 
I’ve been an unkind woman to you. It was my 
nagging that drove you away from home, but I 
never dreamt you would go for good—Oh, how 
could you! When you didn’t come back I searched 
and enquired everywhere, and made out you’d 
sailed from Australia, and I’d no money to follow 
you. I was nearly mad. I took a place as house¬ 
keeper and advertised for you, and at last one day 
I heard from a London solicitor that my old Aunt 


294 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


Grady was dead and had left me all her property, 
and I’m rich now, George.” 

“It’s more than I am, Sal.” 

“ It ain’t. It’s all yours as much as mine, isn’t it? 
I set out a-purpose to look for you, and traced you 
to New York, and couldn’t hear another word of 
you. So I came here. I thought there might be 
some relations you’d written to, but the only 
Digby I could find in the place-” 

“He told me Linnett,” observed the landlord. 

“That’s right. Linnett’s the name I was born 
with, boss; but I was Digby in Australia. There 
was reasons-” 

“Never mind his name,” cried the bride. “It’s 
him, and that’s enough for me.” 

“But what about me?” faltered Mr. Simson. 

“Well, what about you?” 

“You don’t mean, Sal,” he protested desperate¬ 
ly, “you’ll take on agen with a man like him?” 

“That’s what I do mean. He’s my wedded 
husband—the only man I ever cared for, and a 
better man than you’ll ever be.” 

“You said he bolted and deserted you shame¬ 
ful-” 

“Oh, you wicked villain, you! George—he was 
so fussy and kind, driving me about looking for 



THE WEDDING DAY 


295 


your relations, and pestering me to marry him; but 
I said I never would so long as there was the least 
little hope you was alive. Then he said he’d got a 
friend in New York and he’d find out, and he 
brought me a letter he said was from his friend, 
and it said you had died of fever in the hospital 
and was buried in a cemetery—I forget its name— 
and I gave him money to send out for a tombstone 
—Oh, you lying, wicked rascal! I don’t believe 
now it ever came from America at all.” 

In a paroxysm of fury she pounced on Mr. 
Simson; a crisp sound startled the room, and he 
dodged away from her, feeling his face solicitously. 

Then the landlord interposed, and in the in¬ 
terests of peace the best man hustled Mr. Simson 
into the bar parlour, where he subsided at the 
table and drooped despondently over the wag¬ 
goner’s unfinished meal. 

“Let me go and bash his head in,” pleaded 
George. “I’ve killed better men than him in my 
time. ” 

“No, no, he isn’t worth it, George. Leave him 
alone and we’ll get away out of this,” said the 
bride, clinging to him persuasively. “My own 
house is close by, and it’s yours too. Oh, my dear, 
there’ll be no more naggin’, for we’ll never have 


296 


WITH THE GILT OFF 


to go through the poor, worrying old days any 
more. Come along.” 

He was too bewildered to know how to act; but 
when she slipped her hand under his arm he yielded 
and allowed her to lead him. 

The dazed assembly watched them go in silence. 

“She’s not going?” exclaimed Mr. Simson, 
suddenly rousing in the parlour. “Run after her. 
Tell her it’s bigamy.” 

“What’s the good o’ that?” the best man put 
it to him soothingly. “So’s yours.” 

“That’s true,” the landlord remarked to those 
around him; adding as an afterthought, “Looks 
as if I should never get my whitewashing done.” 

Then, on a sudden impulse, he ran into the 
kitchen, dashed through the bar again and out 
into the middle of the road, where, with a sym¬ 
pathetic glance at the oddly assorted pair depart¬ 
ing together, she in her wedding finery, he in his 
worn, unseemly duds, he contorted himself like a 
bowler at cricket and sent an old shoe whirling 
after them. 

“I’d saved it for to-day,” he apologised shame¬ 
facedly to Mr. Simson’s friends, “and it seemed a 
pity to waste it.” 


Jl Selection from the 
Catalogue of 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

9 


Complete Catalogues sent 
on application 




The East Wind 


By 

Hugh MacNair Kahler 


When a new writer finds and holds an audience 
of two million and more, with no resort to sensation¬ 
alism, sex, or silly sentiment, it is proof enough that 
he has extraordinary ability to interest and entertain. 
When, besides, his work wins emphatic praise from 
such sure critics as Tarkington and Galsworthy, it 
is sound evidence that he does something more. 

The six short novels included in this book abund¬ 
antly illustrate Hugh Kahler’s remarkable appeal to 
three types of reader: those who read stories for 
the story’s sake, those who exact of fiction fresh 
mental stimulus, and those who demand, as well, 
distinctive, brilliant craftsmanship in writing. 

Here is a book to enjoy, to think about, and to 
keep. 


G. P. Putnam’s Sons 


New York 


London 



Georgian Stories 
1922 

Georgian Stories seeks to do for modern 
English fiction what Georgian Poetry does 
for modern English verse. The first es¬ 
sential in the editor’s choice has been a 
“good story,” but he hopes to have in¬ 
cluded only such stories as bear the hall¬ 
mark of sincerity and distinction. 

The list of authors who contribute to 
this first volume is a distinguished one: 
W. Somerset Maugham, who is represented 
by “Rain,” from which was adapted the 
play by the same name, and twenty-one 
other prominent writers, including Stacy 
Aumonier, Sheila Kaye-Smith, Roland 
Pertwee, May Sinclair, D. H. Lawrence, 
Norman Davey, W. L. George, Katherine 
Mansfield, and J. D. Beresford. 

G. P. Putnam’s Sons 

New York London 















































